Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 20 September
September 20, 2019
Congratulations to our staff on D11 and D26, who got stunning feedback from Tuesday’s unannounced Care Quality Commission visit. This week has also seen each clinical group present to the executive on work done this summer and to be done before Christmas. There are some really clear plans to address risks in dermatology, in neonatal services, and in the continued nursing staffing challenge we share with the rest of the NHS. Perhaps the most immediate improvement work is in Imaging where we are determined in October to get all scans done and reported on the same day for inpatients.
Life does and will go on around Unity. Across the whole of the region hospitals and their A&E departments are seeing high rates of arrival and admission. Thank you as ever to everyone playing a part in safely coping. Discharge is still the key step we need to get consistently right if we are to do that without feeling so fraught. Improvements can be about doing our best work more consistently through our MADE events, or new projects like the rehab collaboration we are discussing with commercial partners. I want to be clear that Unity does not stop us doing other things, and so I am delighted that this week the new Female Genital Mutilation service we are going to provide across Birmingham was formally announced – we are one of a handful of new national expert centres.
But Unity is immensely important. Optimising the product, connecting it through HIE to general practice, and next year giving patients remote access to their records is properly transformational. Before that the Go Live fortnight needs to be what it says on the tin. A fortnight, no more, and one in which we find the very best ways to use the new technology to work well together. Electronic prescribing is a big change for us. Results acknowledgement of both imaging and laboratory tests, inside 3 days for all inpatients and 3 weeks for outpatients, is a change too. Both are safety measures. Having a ward-based task list should make handover easier and help to manage pressure on overworked people – in the end our IT needs to save not steal time. Especially time to care.
All week we have been putting out messages and explanations for both what is going on and how to get help. That does not stop because we start Go Live at 3am on Saturday 21 September. If anything it is even more important during a massive change that we communicate well, assume the best endeavours of one another, and work to find solutions. I published yesterday the decision structure to do that. 4050 remains your key number to get help, including clinical insight, and (out of hours) the route for any bank or agency arrivals without a log in. The bank office will cover this in the day.
It sounds obvious but we need, from day one, to adopt the habits that will work best and not set about finding workarounds. Unity is a shared clinical record for much of what we do. In time it will be a shared record for even more. If we all use the system, and use it in similar ways, it will work best for all of us. That is why it is really important that you electronically sign your work in Unity. If you do not do that no-one else can see that work.
Super Users and digital champions are absolutely central to the coming few days. In your area by tomorrow their names should be on the wall. I published a picture on Monday of the T-shirted heroes with armbands. It is these colleagues who will be the gateway for you to get help and advice, and will be able to translate what we know into what you do. Like any translator, they need a willingness from us to listen and to learn. New IT systems are frustrating. It is human to blame the system for my own lack of knowledge. Go Live fortnight is our chance to take what we know, understand what we do not know, and find someone within a couple of hundred yards of where you work who can help and does know. There is nothing inevitable about chaos from tomorrow. There is every reason to expect success and surprises. We need to calmly manage the latter and use the coming two weeks to move towards the former.
Lots of clinical colleagues have given up time, wit and energy to making Unity a probable success. Sharon, Ash, Roger, Cliona, Leong, Nick, Pun, Ed, and Lydia among many others deserve our thanks. Unity will give us all data and intelligence about the work we do that allows us to see the very best of what we do, to compare it to others, and to improve. Unity Go Live tomorrow has probably come too late for the 2019 QIHD Poster Competition (entries close in a few weeks – we are up to 75 but welcome more) but I am sure in 2020 we will see our improvement journey digitalised at long last: Fingers crossed!
All about go-live: https://connect2.swbh.nhs.uk/trustindigital/unity/all-about-go-live/