Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 29 March

March 29, 2024

This week’s Friday message is from Mel Roberts, Chief Nursing Officer

Dear colleagues,

This is the final Friday message of the 23/24 financial year – and what a year it’s been – challenging, but immensely rewarding. I just wanted to take a moment to extend my gratitude to each and everyone of you for your dedication, resilience, and commitment to providing exceptional care to our patients. Over the past year, we have faced challenges, yet by remaining true to our trust values of ambition, respect, and compassion, we have continued to deliver high-quality healthcare services to those who need it most.

It’s no secret that NHS finances are under the spotlight at the moment, and the incoming financial year will also bring more challenge. We are working together with the Black Country Integrated Care System to look at ways in which we can work differently, to reduce our costs and increase our productivity. There will be more messaging on this over the forthcoming weeks, but if you have any innovative ideas of things you think could help, then I am sure that our Acting Chief Finance Officer, Simon Sheppherd will be pleased to hear them.

Closer to home, the new financial year will also be the one in which we open Midland Metropolitan University Hospital, and yesterday we reached a significant and exciting milestone as we entered a period of ‘soft activation.’ This is where we can start to commence some important activities on site, whilst it is still owned by Balfour Beatty. This will see some equipment (such as pathology and imaging) installed, and teams such as IT and security will continue their work to ensure that we have digital coverage inside the building and that things such as CCTV and alarm systems are working as we need them to. Keep an eye on our comms channels over the next few days and weeks, for some behind the scenes footage!

It is a significant step forward towards opening the hospital later this year, and I would like to thank colleagues who have worked so closely with Balfour Beatty to get us this far. It’s definitely starting to feel more real now, in fact, the next step after soft activation will be the official handover of the building from Balfour to the Trust, and that will see the start of our main activation period – doing everything we need to do to get the hospital ready to welcome our first patients in autumn.

Earlier this week we successfully appointed two clinical directors in medicine and emergency care; Dr May Yan, Clinical Director for Acute Medicine and Dr Satya Khare, Clinical Director for Emergency Medicine. This is the first time that we have split this leadership role, and it recognises the size and the challenges that come with our emergency and acute medicine directorates. These new posts will provide more focussed leadership and support to the medical teams within the two specialities. Congratulations to Dr Yan and Dr Khare on their new roles.

Finally, today is the start of a bank holiday weekend (seems a long time ago since we had the last one doesn’t it!) Do take some time to reflect over the next few days, a quarter of 2024 is almost done – and the next three promise to be busy, but very exciting. Thank you to everyone who is working over the next few days, and I do hope you all manage to enjoy some downtime with your family and friends, and if you are celebrating, I wish you a wonderful Easter.

Best wishes
Mel