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Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 24 September

September 24, 2021

This week has been a good one, but as ever, a tiring one for me and for most of you, I am sure.  There are four significant developments worthy of note from this week that I’d like to draw your attention to:

  • Our COVID-19 inpatient numbers, both in acute beds and in critical care, are falling.  We are treating this with cautious optimism, but from a peak in early September of 95 inpatients, we have fallen incrementally to 56 as of Thursday.  Our contingency planning has involved the pulling down of elective Orthopaedic work, which was a decision we did not take lightly as a senior team.  The patients on those waiting lists are in considerable pain and have been waiting some months for surgery.  I am hopeful we can restart arthroplasty work again soon and we review our ability to do so, at least once per week
  • The early work we have done on our new strategic objectives as a Trust, all designed to deliver on our core purpose (improving life chances and health outcomes) and on our vision (to be the most integrated healthcare organisation in the country) was well received at our Trust Leadership conference this week.  The event itself was a fantastic and motivating event and brought 130 senior leaders together on a face to face basis for the first time in 2 years.  We will be doing further engagement with all of you on those objectives and on our priorities, in the coming weeks.  Please watch out for the opportunities to participate in those events and provide your feedback and input
  • I have announced that we will have a new executive director for our leading role in improving population health, starting on 11 October Daren Fradgley, Director of Integration and Deputy CEO at Walsall Healthcare, will be coming on secondment to our Trust, to lead the multi-agency response to integration of care pathways and primary prevention in Sandwell and as our executive lead for our work in this space in Birmingham, too.  Daren has led the development of the Walsall Together partnership, which has achieved impressive results on admission avoidance and home first discharge in a short period of time.  The post is being funded by all the local agencies, most notably Sandwell Council and the CCG.  This is an example of the new, outward facing world we must influence, as the biggest employer in the borough and as the largest healthcare provider in both Sandwell and Ladywood & Perry Barr
  • The first phase of reviewing our workforce requirements for our once in a generation opportunity of the Midland Met, completed.  Thank you to all those who did so much hard work on this over the last few months.  Our task together between now and Christmas, is to review those establishments, and determine how we recruit to them, how we afford them financially and how we ensure they are reflective of what each clinical service or speciality is planning to achieve