Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 15 October
October 15, 2021
Dear all,
Once again it was a privilege to cover for Richard this week as he took a well-earned break. It has been a busy week – it began with me being fortunate to receive my COVID-19 booster vaccination – almost exactly 6 months after my second vaccine back in April. I was beginning to be mindful of lower immunity, particularly as my 12 year old son has COVID-19 at the moment (and is enjoying self-isolating on his Xbox…!). After a 15 minute break, I also had my flu jab in the other arm, at the Sandwell Hospital Hub, both painless procedures and I had no ill-effects. Thank you to everyone involved, it was a very efficient process with a friendly team who put me at ease straight away. If I am completely honest I was wondering whether having both at once would cause me to feel unwell, but it was absolutely fine. If you haven’t yet booked your jab(s) then please do. You need six months between the date of your second COVID-19 jab and the booster and you can choose whether you want separate appointments for your flu / COVID-19 booster, or like me, have them both done at the same appointment. Our flu season is predicted to start early so please don’t delay – vaccination will keep you and your loved ones safe, as well as protect our patients.
The roll-out of Surginet in Theatres over the past two weeks has gone well – this should enable safer patient care and a more efficient service. This has meant new training for colleagues in surgery and a lot of hard work by the implementation team – thank you and congratulations on a smooth process.
Yesterday was National AHP Day, celebrating the contribution that Allied Health Professionals make across Health and Social Care in England, from Children and Young People through to Old Age, from Acute Hospital Care to pre and post Hospital Care and Primary Care, in Local Authorities, Education, Housing, criminal justice and the third and independent sector. I hope that you took the opportunity to recognise and celebrate as teams. Thank you for your contribution, particularly over the last 18 months.
This week has also had a strong planning focus – as Richard mentioned in a recent Friday message, we are moving in to the next phase of MMUH service and workforce planning that will enable us to construct a robust medium term financial plan that we can then use to build in to system plans in Birmingham and the Black Country, and we scoped out the workplan for this this week. We are also actively planning for the second half of the financial year; system financial envelopes have been issued and we are working through our share with system partners. Over the next two weeks we need to crystallise our winter support and bed capacity plans, and determine how much extra funding we can earn for Elective Recovery – and how much this will cost us. As always, ensuring we have a firm grip on our finances, funding sources for new or additional costs and the right governance on service changes whilst moving at pace, will be a really important balance to strike – please do get in touch with me or any of the finance team if you have any questions about finance processes, or funding questions.
This evening we hold our Star Awards event which is the first face to face awards ceremony in two years. There were over 500 colleagues and teams nominated this year, good luck to everyone on the shortlist. Although only a small number can be shortlisted with just 20 going home with a winner’s prize tonight, you are all winners! Everyone nominated is deserving of recognition and we all hope all of the shortlisted nominees enjoy the celebrations tonight.
As always, thank you for everything you continue to do for our patients – I know it’s tougher than ever. Please do look after eachother, #bekind – and if you haven’t yet booked some team time out funded by the Trust, please do take this opportunity.
Dinah McLannahan
Chief Finance Officer