Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 10 January
January 10, 2020
The start of any new year will always come with a mix of new and same old, same old.
Across our children’s wards, emergency departments, district nursing teams, therapy teams and our adult wards we have had to work incredibly hard to safely discharge people and to admit folk arriving. At times, as neighbouring Trusts have struggled, it can feel as if we are ‘bailing out’ partners, although in truth this must always be about quality of care for an individual patient. Thank you for your hard work and for your judgement in trying to find a balance between the safety of the patient we know and the needs of the patient not yet assessed. We will continue to work through how we can maximise the incredible home and community service teams that we employ and maybe begin to alter mind-sets a little about who can best be cared for with support outside our hospital. That includes in February a changed expectation corporately about how rapidly people at the end of their life on a Supported Care Pathway move from acute beds, if that is their wish. Fast track must mean that. Consultant physicians made a powerful case last Friday that this an area where we have to do better if we are to live up to our vision of integrated care and we will act on that in the weeks ahead. Get in touch with Mel Roberts if you want to know more.
Our public health committee spent time on Wednesday on Making Every Contact Count, on mental wellbeing and on weight and obesity. There are dozens of exciting projects and ideas about and you know that we will pull those together into one programme in coming weeks. Both local authority areas now have funded and evidence based prevention services in place, and as GPs locally recruit teams as part of the social prescribing programme funded nationally, there is an opportunity in April to start the new public sector year with a renewed emphasis on how we give brief health advice and where needed refer to longer term prevention support. That applies of course to ourselves, as well as our patients, and I was pleased to see that our partner Balfour Beatty has adopted our smokefree standards on the Midland Met site. They are also an organisation that champions Mental Health First Aid, and first aiders, and I know we too have a number of people trained in those skills. We are looking to expand that support and give it greater profile across our Trust. Do get involved if you can.
This week I met with colleagues in our estate teams to talk to them about the future. You know, as they do, that the intention for many years had been to create an estate support service for Midland Met, and we expected to buy that in from outside the NHS. Some of our colleagues were always going to move to that service. After a competitive process this winter, we have decided in fact to move all of our estate maintenance and management services across to a third party partner (Engie) during 2021. This is a specific decision related to the best interests of developing our professional estate function, and is neither something we are doing to save money nor something that starts a wave of other changes in our Trust. I want to acknowledge again here the brilliant work done across our estates teams and recognise the anger and frustration that the decision brings for some. Over coming months we will all work together to make sure that we keep what is best about how we run our estate now, and get the best from outside expertise, including in the energy and sustainability sector. The changes maintain all NHS staff terms and conditions, including pension rights.
I am really pleased to be able to tell you that we have got past the 80% mark on flu vaccination. I know there are around 8% of colleagues yet to confirm they have had the vaccine or formally refused and so over the coming fortnight the campaign goes on. In March we are reviewing this year’s campaign to understand how best to ensure herd immunity next winter and I know that Tracey and Bethan would value your ideas. There are certainly some myths and misconceptions that took longer to bust this year. Sometimes resilience is needed and everyone involved has exemplified that. As Roger’s video made powerfully clear, flu matters.
You will remember that the Trust now includes three GP practices; Lyndon in the Parsonage Street porta-cabins; Great Bridge; and Heath Street in the Summerfield building near to City. I am pleased to hear that our Birmingham Heath Street practice has been awarded coveted Teaching Practice status. Education, including medical education, will continue to change shape in the future as roles change professionally, and old divides between hospital and primary care medicine erode. But it is good to know that we have peer traditions of excellence across sectors now in the Trust.
Yesterday it was confirmed that we have agreed to take forward a major primary care proposal from April 2020, subject to CQC and CCG approval in coming weeks. We have long worked closely with the Your Health Partnership (YHP) collaboration of GPs, with practices in the south of Sandwell, including near Rowley Regis and at Carters Green. That practice moves to the Sandwell site next year. GP colleagues asked the Trust some time ago whether we would be interested in a merger proposal, which brings all of their practices into our organisation. That proposal is the one that we have now agreed, and within our Primary Care, Community and Therapies Group we will now create a directorate called Your Health Partnership which includes their and our historic Sandwell practices. Having such a large GP presence in the Trust will change us, and has the potential to improve what we do, and the outcomes we offer patients. In particular it may help us to better direct our services at the patients who need us most.
Taken together from April 2020 around 10% of all patients registered with a practice in our CCG (Sandwell and West Birmingham) will have chosen this Trust for their primary care. You will remember we said in our 2020 vision that we wanted to be an integrated care provider of choice. As I began this message, some things stay the same, but we do start the New Year with some things new too!
If you want to know more about the YHP changes or those in estates the attached Frequently Asked Question documents may be helpful to you.
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