Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 22 December 2017
December 27, 2017
You will have seen in today’s bulletin arrangements for getting food over the Christmas and New Year period. Free breakfasts are available to people working on 25 December. A tiny gesture, but one that reflects gratitude to those people away from family and friends over the period. Thank you for your efforts for our patients. With bank holidays falling extensively this year over two weekends, it is going to be a long period of some “downtime” in our own services and those of others’. I hope we are better prepared than ever before for that challenge, both inside the Trust and with all the appointments now available to local people in general practice. After three years effort we can now book GP appointments from our sites for patients in key areas, which should help us all to join up as a system.
Today’s bulletin also details the arrangements in place to support discharge. The bed pressures we experience are, in the main, a direct result of low volumes of discharges from our sites on key days, either overall or with any discharges happening late in the day. With our focus on Expected Dates of Discharge (EDDs) we should be able to predict what will happen with much greater accuracy and then manage to it. The consultant of the week system in key medical specialties will help us to balance the needs of patients due to go home with those waiting for diagnosis or treatment as emergencies in our assessment units. Next week I plan to join those daily MDTs to see for myself how we are connecting up front door acute medicine with our specialty teams. There is, quite bluntly, nothing inevitable about a winter bed crisis. The data shows very clearly that our patients are typically waiting for services we provide and we need to be smarter and often faster about accessing those services so that length of stay begins to reduce by around half a day. If we achieve that then the twenty patients on each site who get “stuck” in our system will move through it and get better, more appropriate care. Please make sure, as we have written about this a lot this month, that anyone able to move to a “medically fit” bed is flagged as such on our computer system, as we continue to have empty beds in our community bed base.
Today we have been out and about judging the very best that our Trust has to offer by way of Christmas decorations. Always a tough choice and the panel has a difficult task. Cheered only slightly by samosas and mince pies – fruit was also available. From the many entries we have selected four winners. Congratulations indeed, and Rosie Fuller has your envelopes stuffed with gift tokens!
End of life care services have, of course, led the way in many fronts this year in our Trust. So it is no surprise at all that across our sites they again posted a brilliant set of entries. But the Day Hospice based at Rowley, choreographed by Claire Roach, led the way and takes one of our prizes.
Unrelated to their food offering, we this year awarded the prize to neurophysiology at City. Hand crafted entries were their special ingredient. Let’s hope when they move to the new department at Sandwell in 2019 that they can keep up that standard. We are fortunate to have very much the best neurophysiology team in the region in our midst, and so the teams’ skill in handicraft is just a sideline.
Play therapist Abbie Hanlon organised a variety of paediatric entries. Some came courtesy of local charities and football clubs like the Baggies. But the Lyndon 1 entry was a local effort with a focus on Minnie and Mickey Mouse. A multi professional effort too, with hard work across the team, including our trainee doctors. This narrowly beat the effort of the neonatal unit, despite some judge bias, which picked up the theme of a snowman travelling the world, with good wishes in lots of local languages. A very suitable message in our Trust and our community.
Finally, and most grandly, our occupational health (OH) service followed up their success in flu vaccination, with a multi screen movie production evoking the spirit of friendship and fun over the holiday period. It did demand only some singing from the judging panel. An exceptional effort and a tribute to Tracy and Suzanne among others. Again we have a fantastic team in OH, and the work to get ready for such a grand production testified to spirit, innovation and determination from a Beacon service.
Whilst these are collective achievements, individuals stood out. Reverend Anne Stevenson prepared a small feast for us to end with and conducts her last Christmas service on site at City at 11.15 on Monday. And Beata Wojtas, one of the team at Leasowes, who had made an entire snowman from rice. No really. A completely amazing effort even when compared to the disposable recycled cup stapled snowmen that a number of colleagues had made. Next year we will find a way to reward in our ceremonies these individual efforts, and will probably launch a best decorated note trolley/wheelchair element to the festivities, so get ready now!
Thank you to all who are working in the community and in acute care over the holidays. One more Friday message next week to celebrate 2017, then onto 2018 and a new computer system. A little luck needed then, to go with our skill and teamwork.
#hellomynameis….Toby