Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 12 April
April 12, 2024
This week we continue the “soft activation” works at MMUH . These efforts are crucial in ensuring that all systems and processes are gradually implemented and tested before the full operational transition. As we progress with the soft activation, our focus remains on maintaining the highest standards of quality and safety in preparation for the opening of MMUH in October.
Earlier in the week , the installation of our Milli-Q water filtration units was completed, a crucial step as it enables us to continue on to installing, commissioning and testing our analysers. These units are essential to ensuring our analysers have a steady stream of purified water, ensuring our tests are accurate. The work needed on such testing is painstaking and intensive. It just gives you a flavour in microcosm, of what is needed to make things safe before our big move.
Yesterday, we hosted an away day with our colleagues from the national New Hospital Programme (NHP) at the Department of Health, who are critical friends in helping us prepare, and support the move. The importance of leveraging critical partners like NHP to support our preparedness efforts is vital. By engaging with partners like NHP, we can tap into their expertise, resources, and support networks to enhance our preparedness and address any challenges more effectively. Our MMUH programme team are getting plaudits from NHP about how we are managing this work and leaving little or nothing, to chance.
The session with NHP was about working collaboratively with them to prepare for what is called an IPA Gateway 4 readiness review, which is a review which focuses on our readiness for service – in other words “how ready we are, what are gaps and any mitigations we may need to take?”. I understand that NHP colleagues were impressed with work and preparedness to date and thank you to all of those involved.
Changing subjects briefly, but no less strategically important, the end of the financial year also saw an increase in our clinical research recruitment- not only have we successfully increased the number of patients participating in clinical research from previous years, but we are also the highest recruiting organisation within the Black Country. Over 2700 of our patients have agreed to participate in clinical trials across the organisation. This provides our patients with the opportunity to gain access to new and novel treatments, diagnosis and services. It is widely acknowledged and evidenced that those organisations that are research-active have lower mortality rates and better patient outcomes overall. Given the ethnic diversity of the population we serve, the clinical research opportunities are significant because of the sheer breadth of clinical presentations and pathology our clinicians see. We should celebrate that improvement and be ambitious to do even better – our core purpose, after all, is to improve the life chances and health outcomes of our population. We don’t just treat the sick.
The Q1 Pulse Survey launched last week and has been well received, and we are already ahead of our response rate compared to the previous survey in January. James Fleet, Interim Chief People Officer and I have been conducting staff drop-in sessions to encourage participation and address any questions or concerns. We’ve had relatively good attendance and engagement during these sessions and there has been some great quality (and sometimes fiery!) conversation. Your input is invaluable, and we aim to achieve a response rate of 45% with your help. Remember, the survey is anonymous and takes only 5 minutes to complete.
Have a good week.
Richard