Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 22 November
November 22, 2019
It has definitely been a week of thank yous. I hope it has been where you work. Earlier this week it was national kindness day, and the simplest of all forms of kindness is usually acknowledging someone’s success, effort or the learning from something that did not go quite right. Last night we tried to say thank you to the team in IT, and in operational leadership, among our clinical leaders and elsewhere who worked so hard two months ago to put in Unity. It was fantastic to hear from individuals in the backbone corporate functions talk about how inspired they were by working alongside clinical staff, and from some of our clinicians talking about the difference Unity is already making. Apparently only six critical care units in England are paperless, and our clinical team of the year is one of those.
By now each Clinical Group’s digital committee has started meeting. It is here, as you will know from last month’s Heartbeat special features, that ideas get prioritised to improve Unity further. By bringing together our super users into local action forums we can understand what is and is not working well about the product. Belatedly, but nonetheless, we have in place now our top 20 optimisation indicators – and Group teams have data on who is managing to use the product best. It is really important that the competing distractions of Christmas and of ‘winter’ do not stop a focus on using the product well. Cascade training for Capman is rolling out across our wards.
On Wednesday our new respiratory configuration went into place. It is no small task to not only relocate wards but an NIV unit, recreate staffing rotas and rosters and get ready for different clinical pathways in our AMUs, and with ambulance colleagues. The Board agreed a dataset of impact – the positive benefits we seek and the negative risks we need to watch – and that will be tracked and responded to over the coming weeks. Shout out to Guy Hagan, Jacqui Moore, Helen McGivney, Dawn Hall and Jodie Stubbs for their hard work making this happen!
For much of the last few months, my own time has been dominated by either our IT or Midland Met. This week has certainly had plenty of the later in it, with politician briefings, and financial modelling being worked through. We are down to the real detail of the build programme now with Balfour Beatty. I was pleased to be able to co-present the project with Balfour this week to a session of institutional and business leaders across Birmingham. The debates there brought home to me again how huge a project this is, even in a city with the Commonwealth Games and perhaps HS2. The scale of engagement for the wider regeneration agenda we have in mind between City and the new hospital is significant, and whilst we are finishing off bus route practicalities, and car park planning applications, we are also engaged in area changing propositions like road widening for Dudley Road, new schools for the houses being built, and university facilities nearby. In 2020 we should be able to start to “roadshow” some of that around our organisation, and I hope by the spring that our Virtual Reality technology would allow any of you to literally imagine walking the corridors of the new hospital, with robots moving things beside you, the enormous inspiring art gallery and signage that talks to you in multiple languages.
It will be important as we develop all of those exciting ideas for #morethanahospital to stay in touch and grounded with the ideas of people who have lived and worked around the Windmill estate for many years. Building on the USE-IT collaboration, on our own Learning Works champions, and other partnerships we are trying to hear those voices. This week I walked the streets with groups of local residents to better understand the parking, littering, traffic, and pollution issues, as well as the ideas that they want to see us bring to bear. Whether it is connecting the canals, or getting the 11 bus route to work with us and for us, we will make sure that the real details of the move are worked out with those who know the patch: Above all we want to be a decent neighbour to the community we serve. In NHS management speak – an anchor institution.
Surrounded as we are by the deficits of the NHS, it is not uncommon for staff to ask why we bother to try so hard to make the finances work for us. Two examples might suffice as an ongoing reminder that we have plenty of money but choices to make. Last week a significant decontamination failure was identified in one of our services. More than 20 additional scopes have been funded this week while we get on top of the issue. No business case, no delay, no committee – just rapid reaction to risk; possible because we have cash in the bank and a cogent budget. Then last night we were able to agree in principle a determination to start next year undertaking more complex orthopaedic operations at the Trust, which historically have sometimes been transferred into the ROH in Birmingham. Having developed our own expertise, and back now on surgical income budget, we want to offer local residents better services and let the talents of the people we employ be more fulfilled.
Finally, thank you for filling out the NHS-wide anonymous staff survey. Almost 2500 colleagues have. There are still voucher and cash prizes for the next five hundred respondents as we strive to get past 3,000 responses before the survey closes this time next week. I need to reiterate, no one here will know your replies. But the rich picture the survey will paint will allow us to compare ourselves to neighbours, peers, and most importantly our own ambitions.
#hellomynameisToby