Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 20 July
July 23, 2018
Now that the football season is on a fortnight’s break, time to advertise our annual cricket match against local GPs at Dartmouth Cricket Club between the M5 traffic chaos and the Hawthorns. Please do come forward if you want to play and email me directly. Half a team carries over from last year’s narrow win so there are places up for grabs. And food, drink, face-painting, and a Sunday in the sun if you want to come along and cheer. More details in the communications bulletin each day.
Next week our colleagues in pathology take the next step in the TUPE process as we move towards creating the Black Country Pathology service in October. The new combined service across four Trusts will see little change, in that locations stay the same in 2018/19, and lots of change, in that we will be working with a shared service partnership. Teams will still be colleagues but the partnership will be contractual. We will have standards we contract for and expect, and new ideas may take just a little longer to get moving. I am delighted that Paul Harrison has been hired to be the clinical lead for the new service. A haematologist, Paul was a very successful medical director at Russell’s Hall, and his decision to take on the role is testimony to how important for the local health system pathology, and this new partnership, is. I know Paul will work with us as we finalise arrangements for specialised pathology, and as we move beyond the important staffing and logistical details, and think through what scientific opportunities the new scale can offer.
Just after I open the incident reports for the Trust each morning, I take a look at our safety plan data. I know a lot of clinical leaders in the Trust do the same. This week, for the first time, we are seeing 100% delivery of our standards, and in particular the drive to make sure any missed checks are completed inside 48 hours. That is a significant and important step, and thank you to those folk working to do this each night and each day. Attention to detail is at the heart of our safety effort and so is team work. Every VTE assessment is a chance to save a life. Our sepsis data shows us that there remain opportunities to see risk and intervene. We know from the feedback loop on inter ward discharges that we still have a handful of missed medication handovers when we move patients. Our focus on that, your focus, is a credit to a determination to put patients first.
The week ahead sees more Listening Into Action events. I have reported here on the work colleagues in ED are doing to improve care, and last week saw a successful social care visioning event to think about how we can get the most from the privilege of having seven day social work teams. Encouragingly there is also a recognition that some of the differences in approach between Sandwell and Birmingham do not make sense for clients or families, so hopefully we can develop an SWB approach which is common to both. Medicine’s ward multi professional teams gather on Thursday to talk through progress with Consistency of Care and begin to think about new trainee doctors joining us at the start of August, and CQC inspectors landing with us this autumn. Medicine has a huge amount of great practice to showcase and August’s TeamTalk will see Arvind Rajasekaran present across the Trust the future hospital work in respiratory medicine that we have been doing with the Royal College of Physicians. Look out for more details during August of our QIHD Trust wide poster contest as we a start a new tradition of shared learning in our Trust too.
Simon Stevens, Chief Executive of the NHS commissioning board, otherwise known as NHS England, has been outlining what might form part of the ten year NHS plan, which launches this November. I am sure we will get more details soon. And I know that a focus on mental well-being will be at the heart of that plan and our response. Locally we are actively advocating for a proportionate reduction in spend on physical health if we can be sure the money will be well spent on mental health. I hope that the money where our mouth is approach has your support as well. Simon has also been explaining the benefits for more day surgery in the NHS. Once again national policy seems to be following just marginally behind us, as our 23 hour unit went into operation last month. Congratulations to the clinicians and managers in the surgical group for the work you are doing. We had the best waiting times locally before and we are getting even further ahead…
As part of our regular updates on IT I attach this week’s performance overview.
Informatics Data – Date- 20 July 2018
Finally: July pay packets will see the new pay award included, and in August the NHS will pay the back pay due for April, May and June. Overdue and well deserved.
#hellomynameis….Toby