Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 15 June
June 15, 2018
The NHS is gearing up for our 70th birthday celebrations (July 5th is the big day). We very much hope that a long term funding settlement will follow from that, and this week we had the welcome news that the latest pay award has been accepted. Confirmation of funding for that to local Trusts is due shortly! That should provide a boost to us all, and the news that the tier 2 visa restrictions will be lifted for key NHS roles, including doctors and nurses, is also great news. In 2017 we made massive progress in recruitment. That has taken a knock with our Midland Met delay, and we need to reach far and wide to draw in talent, and talent that reflects our own diversity locally if we can.
This weekend sees continued events to mark the anniversary of Windrush. British citizens who moved to this country from the Caribbean, and many of whom found a home in the NHS, and some in our Trust. I know that some of the sons and daughters of that generation work now in our Trust. Thank you for your service, and I hope that the intensity of celebration says something about the esteem in which that is held. The disgraceful immigration fiasco of recent months (and in truth years) gave a contrary impression. This organisation benefits from the range of backgrounds, interests and experiences of our staff, and we need to continue, with our staff networks to the fore to champion that. We are close to achieving our initial targets to improve the diversity of our organisation’s leadership at band 8 and above, and targeted programmes of investment, empowerment and support continue.
Click to download the Windrush Celebration event flyer
In the last few days I led an open staff meeting with the dedicated colleagues who form our IT teams. There is recognition of the strain placed on patients and colleagues by both our long term problems and recent outages. The change control process has been in operation for ten days now. It is giving us a more professional model of certainty about what changes we are ready to make and when. If however you are being told inadvertently that it is preventing changes you need or work you want, do speak up, as it should do nothing of the sort. There is no ban on IT changes, just a sensible process for governing that. I have held good discussions this week with expert supply partners who we will be bringing in later this month to give us more capacity around IT, especially around infrastructure, and from the start of July we will publish data on performance. Technology issues ought to be predictable and foreseeable in the main and that is the shared goal of the IT department in coming weeks.
We hosted a Ministerial visit yesterday to the Midland Met site, with Steve Barclay MP, Minister of State for Health, joining the Chairman and West Midlands Mayor Andy Street to see the building as it is now. There remains a commitment to finish the hospital as quickly as possible. It has proved, as I have explained here before, impossible to get agreement on doing that via the current PFI company, and so we are working with government to make in principle a decision by the end of July on the final programme of funding and building. In the meantime, we have secured some investment to help repair the building a little, and support too to move forward with our reconfiguration changes in 2019. The issue is a distracting one, and there is no hiding the fact that other things, like our pathology programme, and some quality initiatives, have taken longer than we would like whilst Midland Met competes for attention and time. I very much hope that that balance can shift this summer and we can achieve certainty.
On Thursday 21st we have our Annual General Meeting at 6pm in the Education Centre at Sandwell. The Board will do our best to answer questions, about last year’s quality and financial accounts, and about the future of care, research and education here. Do come if you can (England’s games are Monday and Sunday this week). Sarah Yusuf, Group Director for Imaging, will give us the keynote talk on developments in imaging, and the upcoming opening of the new energy centre at city (opposite the old nursery) means we can now move forward at pace with new equipment adjacent to the Birmingham Treatment Centre. Investing in the right equipment is something we are determined to do, so make sure if you have ideas and thoughts on that, that your pitch is known to your directorate leadership team.
Finally, thank you to everyone who has had your PDR, and every line manager who has loaded that data on the sometimes temperamental database. Moderation of PDR outcomes, and a focus on the support to high potential folk flagged in PDRs will get attention from both the clinical leadership executive and the board in July and August. We are determined to better support careers, plans and dreams in our Trust, and the PDR process is key to that aim: Aspiring to Excellence.
#hellomynameis….Toby