Monthly archives: July 2024

Everything you need to know about Omnicell – Marsha Jones on our new medication management

With the introduction of our new medication management system, Omnicell, Associate Deputy Chief Nurse, Marsha Jones, explains more. From the quick and simple one-hour training process, to identifying our current challenges and how these are rectified by Omnicell’s technology, Marsha describes the details of what this equipment means for the Trust.   

“At City, Sandwell and Midland Met, Omnicell are providing us with automated drug cupboards and smart carts. We’re moving towards this way of working as this innovative technology will help us to rectify our current challenges such as drug wastage and incidences of mismedication. In recent years, we’ve seen a quicker turnaround of patients, which also has an impact on doing timely drug rounds. Omnicell’s equipment allows for more efficient drug rounds, releasing more time to focus on our patients. 

“The new training teaches colleagues the functionality, this includes what the workflows are and the steps that you need to take when using the technology.  

“To make things easier for our staff, we’ll be bringing the Omnicell cabinets to Sandwell and City to get you ready for Midland Met ahead of moving in later this year.”

You can find out more about Omnicell on the dedicated intranet page here.   

Safeguard downtime: 23 July

There is a planned upgrade to the Safeguard system scheduled for Tuesday 23 July from 10am – 1pm.

Note: The Safeguard system (incident reporting) will be inaccessible to all users during this time and any changes made will not be saved. This means that all staff need to be logged out of Safeguard whilst the necessary upgrade takes place.

For more information, please email swbh.safeguard-support@nhs.net.

Notice Fraud: Summer 2024

The RSM NHS counter-fraud newsletter provides insights into current fraud trends and risks, our counter-fraud work, and recent fraud cases.

Click here to see the full Notice Fraud Summer 2024 information sheet in full.

Don’t forget – all suspicions of fraud should be reported to NHSCFA by calling 0800 028 40 60.You can also report fraud anonymously on 0800 028 4060 or online.

Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 12 July

Dear colleagues,

I hope that you all managed to take the time to get to a polling station on Thursday last week to vote in the general election. Voting is an often forgotten privilege which I’ve always personally felt we should use, whatever our political views and the strength of them.

You will be well aware that a landslide victory for labour has seen Sir Keir Starmer appointed as Prime Minister, bringing with him a whole new cabinet – including a new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care in Wes Streeting.

The appointment of a new Health Secretary, let alone a brand-new government, always brings a period of change and potential new directions for the NHS, and I am hoping that Labour stays true to their manifesto, of building an NHS fit for the future, and we do start to see some positive changes.

Some of the things they have promised include:

• Cutting NHS waiting times, by offering 40,000 extra appointments each week – the 18 weeks from referral to treatment was achieved with the last Labour government and they will want to get back to 18 week waits again for 90-95% of patients by the end of their first term.

• Healthcare closer to home – our place-based partnerships in both Sandwell and Ladywood and Perry Barr will be central to this and we have already made a great start in delivering urgent care “disruption” through our fantastic community and primary care teams – our ED attendances are 10% lower than in 2019 and our admissions to hospital of people over the age of 65 is declining – other Trusts are not achieving this .

• Improving mental health – something that does have an impact on our emergency portals every day of the week.

• Reducing health inequalities – one that I know will be particularly close to the hearts of many of you, as we serve some of the most deprived areas of the country.

Things won’t change overnight, we aren’t going to be able to stop our financial improvement programme – we must still deliver against our deficit, but I am expectant that the NHS will see brighter days in the not-so-distant future.

Onto more local things.

The Care Quality Commission has made several visits to our maternity unit at City Hospital, and they have raised some concerns with the Trust. Last week we received a Section 29a Warning Notice letter of concern, which outlines six key areas for improvement. These include:

•  Equipment checks not always evidenced as being completed

•  No resuscitaire within triage

•  A lack of privacy and dignity in triage

• Staffing and skill mix not always in line with guidance

• Induction of labour guidance did not meet national guidance and lack of risk assessment

• Patient risk in relation to Birmingham Symptom specific Obstetric Triage system  (BSOTS)

We know that the environment within maternity is getting tired, and the move to Midland Met, where we have state of the art facilities can’t come soon enough for both our patients and our staff, however, some of these things are completely in our gift to solve. Providing patients with privacy and dignity is at the heart of everything we do – we can, and simply must do better.

A Section 29a letter means that we have 10 days to respond to the CQC and provide evidence of actions we are taking to improve. It is likely that the CQC will pay more visits to maternity, and I would ask that if you have any level of concern about this that you discuss it with your line managers and other local leaders, or even to our FTSU guardians if you wish to raise safety concerns anonymously.

We are now 12 days into the Q2 pulse survey, and although we haven’t been reporting as much as we have previously, due to the Midland Met no fly zone – I am delighted to hear that our response rate is already at 15%. I hope I am right in thinking that you are all now seeing the benefits of completing the staff surveys, as you are seeing that tangible improvements, such as the creation of our people engagement teams, are happening. If you haven’t yet completed, please do so here by the time it closes on 31 July.

Staying with the theme of people – there are just a couple of days left to vote for your new chairs and vice-chairs of our staff networks – the vote will close at 5pm on Monday and you can place your votes here. I am hoping to bring you the news of those important roles in my message next week.

Finally, some news on a couple of appointments and departures.

I am very pleased to announce that following a competitive interview process, Dr Subash Sivasubramaniam has successfully been appointed to the position of Group Director Surgical Services and will be taking up the post on 12 August. I am sure you will wish to join me in congratulating him on his successful appointment. At the same time, the executive team wish to extend their thanks for the dedicated way, Mr Siten Roy has led the group, his hard work and leadership of the group has been appreciated by all.

Daren Fradgley, Chief Integration Officer will be moving on to an exciting new role at the end of July. I am sure you will join me in congratulating Daren on his move to become Group Chief Integration Officer for Lincolnshire. Daren will be accountable for Community and Out of Hospital Services, IT, Digital, Strategy, Planning and Improvement across the Trusts in the Group and his first task will be to align services between the Trusts.

I would like to thank Daren for his commitment, professionalism and wish him all the very best for his next chapter. The process of appointing a rapid interim successor is already underway.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Richard

p.s – Come on England – it just might be coming home!

Siemens gas analyser training postponed until implementation

Thank you to everyone who’s attended training so far.  Training 70% substantive staff target has been reached in most areas and take-up has been low this week.

Training is now postponed until the final validation checks have been conducted and the trainers will be back on site when implementation starts.

The following sessions will not be running:

City:

• Wednesday 17 July, 9am – 3pm, A&E handover room
• Thursday 18 July, 9am – 12pm, AMU1 quiet room
• Monday 22 July, 1pm – 4pm, A&E handover room
• Tuesday 23 July, 9am – 3pm, A&E handover room

Sandwell:

• Tuesday 16 July, 10am – 4pm, AMUA quiet room
• Wednesday 24 July, 9am – 3pm. A&E seminar room

If you have any further questions or require more information please contact point of care testing on 0121 507 5352.

Unity printing maintenance: 18 July, 10pm – 11pm

Please be aware essential Unity maintenance will be taking place on Thursday 18 July to ensure the supporting infrastructure remains secure and security compliant. The work is scheduled to begin at 10pm for approximately one hour and should be completed by 11pm.

During this time Unity will remain fully available; however from 10pm until 11pm on Thursday 18 July Unity printing will be unavailable for up to 60 minutes at the following site locations:

• Sandwell – all areas
• City – all areas
• BMEC – all areas
• BTC – all areas

o This will affect specimen label, requisition, and pharmacy printing.

o Any print jobs submitted during this time will be held and printed once the print servers come back online.

If clinical staff are due to collect a sample between time above, we would advise them to wait until specimen labelling functionality returns. If staff have a very urgent specimen to collect that cannot wait to collect and send to pathology, then a manual pathology request form will need to be completed and sent with the sample. It is envisaged that this requirement will be rare and unlikely at those times.

The activity will be closely monitored by our IT support teams.

As always, should you have any further queries then please do contact the IT Service Desk on ext. 4050 or 0121 507 4050 or via Chat with the IT Service Desk.

INSIGHT: Inspiring Students into Research applications open

Are you an early career registered healthcare, social work or public health professional interested in postgraduate research?

Over the next three years, the NIHR has awarded funding for the West Midlands insight scheme, which will fund 5 full-time and 25 part-time studentships per year across a range of master’s programmes at midlands universities.

If you’re interested in applying, you can join the webinars below.

Webinar dates:

• Monday 15 July – 4.30pm – 5.30pm
• Thursday 18 July – 1pm – 2pm

For further information register here.

Midland Met staff induction site tours rescheduled

Thank you for your patience and understanding regarding the rescheduling of induction site tours at Midland Met.

The pause in our tours has enabled Balfour Beatty to make good progress with their technical commissioning of the hospital, ready for them to hand the building over to the Trust.

This week has seen the Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) team carrying out a final review of all areas with Balfour. All the room finishes have been reviewed from an infection prevention and control perspective, with the final floor (level 2) set to be completed next week.

In the last week, the operating theatre ventilation and air flow test have been completed, which is a significant milestone towards completing the technical commissioning.

To maintain this momentum, the decision has been made to continue to pause our induction tours for the rest of July and up to 5 August.

This will allow Balfour the space they need to continue these essential checks, ahead of us opening in October.

Colleagues booked onto affected tours will have received an email alerting them.

Please do not try to re-book at the moment, as all the remaining tours are currently full. The induction team will be putting on sufficient capacity to recover lost tours and we will communicate when these can be booked as soon as possible.

For more information, please email  swbh.mmuhinduction@nhs.net

BCPS Pathology IT important issues

Pathology is currently experiencing IT issues with services.

The BCPS IT team are actively working on the issue and hope to have services returning very shortly.

Pathology are working on prioritising urgent requests.

Update: Unity upgrade – CareAware Reporting currently unavailable

Please be aware due to ongoing issues with the Unity upgrade, CareAware Reporting (capman reporting) is currently unavailable. We expect this issue to be resolved within the next three days.

We apologise for the inconvenience this may cause.