Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 25 May

May 25, 2018

This week saw more than 200 colleagues from all professions and disciplines attend our annual leadership conference at the Bethel Convention Centre in West Bromwich. Heartbeat will share more a flavour from what was a very intense but productive day of work. There was plenty of talk about technology, both how we get our infrastructure sorted out once and for all, and the safety gains that come with Unity implementation later this year. We discussed how we can become more adept at engagement inside our Trust and at integrating with partners. David Carruthers led sessions on quality and quality improvement as we begin to deploy our three year quality plan – and our focus on sepsis will accelerate at pace in the weeks ahead as we look to tackle unacceptable and avoidable variations in care, and to learn what works from big improvements made in A&E and in maternity in recent months.

In some ways for me the story of our conference is summed up when we think about two client groups or services we have. On the one hand the big changes, and move to excellence we see in end of life care. Our partnership with the voluntary sector is very much a role model for how we will work in future, coordinating care and integrating the efforts of partners. We know we have much more to do on involving and engaging primary care in supporting choices by patients at the end of life. At our latest shows that we have not yet beaten a national pattern whereby specialist palliative care services do not always get accessed by all elements of our community. Typically white British patients predominate. On the other hand, our rapidly transforming respiratory services, growing personnel, research output, and working alongside the College of Physicians on Future Hospital models, faces the challenge that we admit a much higher number of patients with respiratory conditions into beds than we would expect, even having adjusted for our population. This challenge came via a very engaging presentation by NHS England’s Deputy Chief Executive, Matthew Swindells, who highlighted that the work we are doing on integrated care was very much a role model for other parts of the NHS. He also hinted a good financial news ahead as we move towards the NHS’ birthday. So, much to do, but the key is how we learn from others, but mainly from the best of what we already do.

My talk at the conference focused on pride. I believe that whatever our challenges, and I hope you feel the Trust’s leadership is blunt about them, we have some amazing services, provide good care, and host some fantastic teams of people. I could have picked out all sorts of examples, whether it is our emerging services for learning disability which are improving sharply, or the dedication of our IT teams battling outtages, or the trustwide success that is our safety plan. Instead my emphasis is on the confidence in our care and our capacity to improve which comes from teams and individuals challenging each other. It is no longer enough for one district nursing team or ward or clinic to be able to celebrate what they do best, although that is important, it is now our habit, and I would suggest needs to become our norm, to look for the best way of doing something and then spread that. So the ward leaders in elderly care for example in our hospital sites are leading the way in finding one way of working across L5, D11, D26 and L4. We need to blend “bottom up” and “top down”, with a dose of peer learning. That is how we will achieve consistency. Both Sarah Yusuf and Tony Waite emphasised the opportunity we have in our QIHD time to do that thinking and make those changes. But we will need to learn with other organisations too. A seven day MRI service, or our ENT service in future, cannot be standalone operations but must sit within the wider Black Country and West Birmingham plan.

I suspect one of the more memorable takeaways from our conference was the promise to get on with two new car parks, one on retained land at city, and one at Sandwell. The daily battle to find a space and sense that during the day there is little room legally to park has become a bigger and bigger chore. So tenders close next week on developments we would hope to have open in a year’s time. Part of the contact for that retains control of prices, and so you can be confident that we will not hike prices further to pay for the build cost. On the other hand, I know it remains an expense to park with us, and loads of alternatives, including cycles and cycle facilities are in place if you want to change your travel plans.

Once again over recent days we have faced major IT difficulties. I want to thank everyone who has raised concerns and advocated for improvement. And colleagues within IT working 24/7 to tackle problems. I have reviewed this week a detailed two year plan and investment programme to address our longstanding underlying problems. Much of the architecture behind our IT is malconfigured or outdated. The funds and commitment is there to change and we will try and use this message over coming weeks to make specific milestones for improvement clearer. Our very first focus is data security and clearly we will be discreet about our current and future state, but please keep an eye on daily comms for new steps we may need you to take to help.
This weekend, the Pride celebration takes place in Birmingham. A chance for LGBT staff and allies to showcase our work and commitment to equality and to diversity. We took part last year at scale (pictured) and I know we will again on Saturday. Join us tomorrow (26 May) from 10:30am in Victoria Square, Birmingham.

#hellomynameis….Toby