Monthly archives: April 2022
PDR training dates available for 2022
PDR training dates are now available for 2022 for managers that have a responsibility for carrying out PDRs.
Training is taking place from 9.30am – 11am on the following dates:
- Wednesday 27 April
- Tuesday 3 May
- Tuesday 17 May
- Friday 27 May
- Friday 10 June
Book on to your preferred session through ESR by searching for ‘381 PDR Training’ in the ‘My Learning’ section.
If you need support with ESR, please email the help desk at swbh.landd@nhs.net.
The Big Conversation – the challenges of COVID-19: 11 – 12 May
The Big Conversation is an free online two-day initiative, convened by the Improvement Directorate within NHS England and NHS Improvement, AQuA (the Advancing Quality Alliance), the Q Community of the Health Foundation and lived experience partners.
On Wednesday 11 May and Thursday 12 May, they are bringing together people from across the health and care systems for a range of interactive discussions, workshops and presentations, giving a space for people to talk through the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, explore continuous improvement opportunities and share fresh insights and ideas on how to promote the improvement of health and care for the benefit of all NHS colleagues, people who use our services and their unpaid carers.
For more information and to sign, please click here.
Star Awards 2022: Sustainability Award
Do you know an individual or team that has made simple changes to demonstrate their commitment to good environmental, social and ethical practices to reduce our environmental impact? Have they made sustainable changes within their area of work and how they work?
Why not nominate them for the Sustainability at this year’s upcoming Star Awards!
Complete the online nomination form by clicking here.
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Nominations close on Friday 3 June.
If you have any questions, please contact the communications team on 0121 507 5303 or email swbh.comms@nhs.net.
Star Awards 2022: Award for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
Do you know an individual or team that has demonstrated engagement internally or externally with a minority group or diverse groups from the Sandwell and West Birmingham community to deliver improved services for colleagues, patients or carers?
Why not nominate them for the Award for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at this year’s upcoming Star Awards!
Complete the online nomination form by clicking here.
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Nominations close on Friday 3 June.
If you have any questions, please contact the communications team on 0121 507 5303 or email swbh.comms@nhs.net.
Are you seeking further development in your career?
With PDR season fast approaching now is the time to start thinking about your development needs and the training opportunities we can offer at the Trust.
The following training programmes are available. For more information please find the link for each standard below:
- Team Leader/Supervisor: Level 3
- Business Administrator: Level 3
- Customer Service Practitioner Level 2
- Customer Service Specialist Level 3
We are holding two information sessions in May 2022 to provide further information, advice and guidance and answer any questions you may have regarding the programmes. See dates below:
- Session 1: Monday 23 May, 9.30am – 10.30am
- Session 2: Tuesday 24 May, 2pm – 3pm
To book onto one of the above sessions please call 0121 507 6425 or email swbh.apprenticeship@nhs.net.
Alternatively you can fill out an expression of interest form – please visit our Connect Page to download this form:
Once you have discussed this with your line manager please return your expressions of interest form by emailing swbh.apprenticeship@nhs.net
Heartbeat: How mortality indicators support improvements in care
As a healthcare organisation we have a responsibility to monitor and understand why people have died whilst in our care.
In many cases, some patients are expected to do die. This could be due to the severity of their condition and whether medical interventions are no longer working. However, there are cases too, where some people die unexpectedly. SWB reports all incidents of death to a national register using what is called – the mortality indicators.
We caught up with Deputy Medical Director Dr Chizo Agwu, and asked her just how the mortality indicators work.
She said: “Mortality is reported using two main indicators. Deaths that have occurred whilst at the Trust use a measure called the Hospital Standardised Mortality Ratio (HSMR) or if a patient dies up to 30 days post-discharge an indicator called Standardised Hospital Mortality Indicator (SMHI) is used. The measures report mortality performance in a way that can be compared and contrasted with other hospitals.
“Typically, elevated mortality rates should act as an alert and prompt further investigations. Quality of care and treatment of patients and clinical pathways are carefully reviewed to ensure that care quality is not compromised and potentially predisposing to avoidable harm, whilst other contributing factors such as data clinical coding, severity of illnesses, admission pathway, end of life care provision, and local population characteristics are also taken into consideration when scoring the mortality indicators. Ultimately the indicators highlight the number of expected deaths per trust per month, compared with the number of actual deaths.”
SWB has a strategy designed to ensure high standards of care and learning are supported through a strong mortality governance framework. As part of the framework, a review was undertaken to examine the Trust’s mortality indices. This identified several aspects around data quality that is resulting in higher than expected mortality ratios, including how we record admissions, primary diagnosis and comorbidities.
Dr Agwu added: “As a result I am leading a project involving colleagues from clinical groups, clinical coding, informatics, communications, operational leads and the improvement team which will oversee a plan to improve the current mortality indices rates.”
One key step has been the appointment of a new Clinical Digital Fellow, Dr Aveen Mahmood who will be supporting reviews of mortality data but also providing additional education sessions. Aveen told Heartbeat: “I am working with the medical director’s team and the improvement team to enhance our patient outcomes. My experience in quality improvement projects and in reviewing mortality data during my foundation training has guided me in my role here. I will be focussed on the acute medical units, where I will work alongside the teams, aiming to optimise our use of Unity and to improve our clinical documentation, ensuring it is in line with the clinical coding standards.
“I am also working closely with the clinical coding team to review our mortality data and ensure it is accurate and representative of our practice. I am excited to be involved in the brilliant work to make positive changes to practice across the Trust.”
So, what can teams do to improve clinical coding?
Aveen said: “We are striving to improve the quality of our documentation, ensuring it is representative of the care we are providing. A key issue in documentation is the use of ambiguous terminology that cannot be recognised and coded, with terms such as ‘impression’ and ‘likely’ for diagnoses. We are also focussing on documenting the highest level of specificity to improve accuracy and depth of clinical coding.
“We are encouraging clinical staff to use alternative terminology, for example ‘treated as’, ‘probable diagnosis’ and ‘diagnosis,’ as per the nationally-set standards. This terminology better reflects the inpatient care received. By structuring our documentation with most clinically important diagnoses first, we can give greater clarity on patient care. We can safely maintain patient records by appropriately documenting patient comorbidities on Unity. These simple updates to our daily practice will give greater clarity about patient care, and will have a significant impact on Trust data. We will also be sharing posters, stickers, screensavers and Connect banners to help keep this message in colleague’s mind.”
HMRC: Important information on tax avoidance schemes
HMRC has recently advised anyone involved in Absolute Outsourcing’s or Purple Pay Limited’s Equity Participation Scheme to withdraw from them as soon as possible to prevent building up a large tax bill.
The two named schemes are:
- Absolute Outsourcing, of Foerster Chambers, Todd Street, Bury, Greater Manchester
- Equity Participation Scheme (EPS), promoted by Purple Pay Limited (PPL), of Gracechurch Street, London.
Both schemes involve individuals agreeing an employment contract and working as a contractor. The schemes pay contractors the National Minimum Wage with the remainder of their wage paid through a loan to try to avoid National Insurance and Income Tax.
Naming avoidance promoters is one of a number of measures that HMRC is using to help people identify avoidance schemes as a part of the Tax Avoidance – Don’t Get Caught Out campaign. Other tools available to customers to help them steer clear of avoidance schemes include an interactive risk checker and payslip guidance.
If you believe you are involved in a tax avoidance scheme, you should contact HMRC as quickly as possible by calling 03000 534 226. Alternatively, if you have been encouraged to get into a tax avoidance scheme, have come into contact with someone selling tax avoidance schemes, or have become aware of a scheme, you can report it in confidence through HMRC’s online form.
Don’t forget – all suspicions of NHS fraud should be reported to the Local Counter Fraud Specialist Sophie Coster (Tel: 07436 268747), Chief Finance Officer, Dinah McLannahan; or NHSCFA by calling 0800 028 40 60.
Did you know our Trust has a clinical ethics committee?
The clinical ethics committee supports colleagues in the care of their patients where there may be ethical uncertainties.
For further details about the committee and how it might help you, please click here.
For more information, please email david.nicholl@nhs.net
Easter sale in the courtyard gardens throughout the week
Throughout the remainder of this week, our cancer services team will be hosting an Easter stall offering a variety of goods from 10am – 2pm in the courtyard gardens at Sandwell.
For further information please email jennifer.donovan@nhs.net or call ext. 2776.
Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 8 April
This week I have been reflecting on prioritisation, on multiple service pressures, on the multiple “asks” made of us as a Trust. Other, more well-known health commentators than me, have been making it clear that the 2022/23 planning guidance is a contradiction in terms to have 13 “priorities” to deliver as an NHS whilst also seeing a reduction in the income awarded to hospitals and community services to deliver them.
No more than in urgent and emergency care, does this difficult balance of the “asks” of us by national government, play itself out. This week has been dominated by urgent and emergency care challenges on an unprecedented scale, with the ambulance service having a record number of call-outs waiting that they couldn’t get to because of crews being already busy responding to patients and transferring teams waiting to offload at hospital. To try to do our bit to mitigate that risk, our own ED and acute medical teams have been put under huge strain and have broken with normal protocols at times, leading to busier than usual emergency departments at all hours of the day and night.
As part of their escalation plans in times of extreme demand, the ambulance service were required to enact their “immediate handover” policy at hospital sites meaning that paramedics, who would normally remain with the patients until the emergency departments are ready to clinically accept them, were bringing patients into the department and immediately returning to the road to respond to more calls. This is a change in practice, but one that was deemed necessary as the risk of not attending to category 1 and category 2 999 calls is deemed greater than the risk of overcrowded emergency departments. I recognise how much additional pressure this has meant within our already stretched services. Thank you to all our clinical and managerial teams at the front door who have responded with professionalism, speed and flexibility to ensure that our patients are safe. I am so proud of your resilience and determination to do the right thing and put our patients first.
These additional pressures look likely to continue for some time, exacerbated by the increasing numbers of patients with COVID-19 in our hospitals, now that national social distancing measures have ended. We have seen a 300% increase in our inpatients with COVID-19 in the last 10 days.
What happens at the front door of our acute hospitals, is everyone’s business – not just the teams in ED and our assessment units. At times like this it is everyone’s responsibility to find out about the risk being managed at the front door and determine whether there is more that you can do to share that risk. A problem shared is a problem halved, no more so than in the world of urgent care. Our health services only work well when there is effective flow into the hospital (with only the patients who need hospital care being brought to us) and out. Community teams are doing a fantastic job working in partnership with primary care and social care to wrap care plans in place to move patients out of acute beds at the right times and increasingly, through frailty services and urgent community response, prevent admission in the first place. What we need continually is great decision making on next steps for patient treatment with a willingness to get patients in the right place at pace. Where there are blockers to doing this, or you think we could do things differently, please make the changes yourselves. Don’t seek permission, seek forgiveness and support.
Urgent and emergency care is one part of what we do but it is where we have a greatest patient safety challenges at present and for the foreseeable future. It is of course, a reflection of the whole health and care system and often our front door colleagues are those picking up the pieces when other services fall down or when there is not enough “pull” through the hospital or the wider system. Heartfelt thanks and admiration for all of you who are continuing to manage in these difficult circumstances. We are determined to do all we can to support you as you prioritise every day. National government may have 13 priorities for the NHS. When you boil it down, our first priority is and always will be, patient safety.
Have a good week.
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