Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 24 May
May 24, 2019
Thank you for everyone working through the sunshine and the Bank Holiday. I know that in some parts of our Trust the hot weather exposes issues of poor air conditioning and other environmental issues. Do feel free to report concerns and don’t assume nothing can be done. But of course having a decent working environment is one part of the rationale for Midland Met, as well as the investments made since 2013 in Sheldon, BMEC, BTC, Rowley Regis, Leasowes and Sandwell. We are moving through the stages of negotiation with Balfour Beatty on the Midland Met site, and have agreed further work this summer that they will do to help us secure an opening in 2022. Our Arts Committee are working hard to make sure that the internal environment we experience matches the grandeur of the exterior of the building, and creates a place we would want to work in and care for people in.
Do get in touch with Ruth Wilkin, our director of communications, if you want to know more about how that work is being governed and designed. One key part of that design is that the entrance to the whole hospital is given over to the work of our researchers and innovators to share and showcase their discoveries. This week we opened the new Clinical Research Facility in outpatients at Sandwell, and I know that our continued focus on both portfolio and commercial research trials is something that each group management team are giving thought to in how we better support specialties and individuals.
We have launched this month’s TeamTalk and my video will be out early next week. We have a month to go now until nominations close for our annual Star Awards. Heartbeat is packed with pages of people as individuals or teams winning awards, and I really hope that we get a bumper crop of nominations for the Trust-wide awards that we do. Please take a few moments to nominate your boss, or your colleague, or one of your team. Big topics within team briefings continue to be vacancies and car parking. There is more information coming out about our changed arrangements for car parking, both the new Pay-As-You-Go scheme, our car sharing app, and the temporary changes to permit permissions as Sandwell, with some colleagues having their spaces relocated to New Square. Individual appeals are heard this week for anyone with a health reason not to be able to make that eight minute walk.
Managers, recruitment and other HR leaders are intensely working on our 1,000 vacancies drive. You will remember from prior messages that we want to try and end 2019 with a much lower vacancy rate that we had in 2018, or 2012, or anytime really! That means advertising jobs, making our Trust an attractive option, tackling retention, and promotion. So, another big thank you to those involved in that hiring process, which is time consuming, even though we have streamlined vacancy control. Even though we are definitely hiring, I want to reiterate our commitment to promoting and developing people inside our Trust. By October we will have implemented our escalator arrangements for HCA bands 2 and 3, which will provide a very clear and very automatic route to those who want to progress through pay scales from one to another, taking on more responsibility with more training. The distinction between bands 2 and 3 in our Trust has been a longstanding concern, advocated especially by Staff-Side and the introduction of the escalator is a very clear signal that those messages have been heard. So, if you are a band 2 HCA and have been told that there “are no band 3 roles about” then bear with us for a few more weeks because that is changing.
Unity and smoking always get a look in my messages right now! Read the back-page of Heartbeat next week and there is plenty on our smokefree status (5 July 2019 if you have missed it…). Our 28-Day Unity challenge is drawing to a close. Scratch-cards have certainly got plenty of people involved. Nearly 1,000 colleagues have sorted out their Unity favourites at our fairs. And in coming days the training dates for digital champions and super users will come out for June and July. The IT team are part way through reconciling all of our computers and printers. In coming weeks our N3 connection is replaced. The countdown is definitely on, so now is the time to think through the role Unity will play in your work. The big safety gain in my view is electronic prescribing. Transcription errors will be a thing of the past and playing hunt the drug chart likewise. In terms of discharge but more importantly in terms of medication error and medication reconciliation we are about to enter a new phase in the quality of care we offer locally. For all that putting Unity in has been long-winded and will be hard, I hope we have some excitement left for what lies ahead.
Finally, advance notice of a subject I think will grow and grow: Across Sandwell we started this month work to talk to every patient we discharged from our acute beds. The idea was to understand their experience of care but particularly to make sure they know their next steps and the support available to help them. Around 40 per cent of those we have worked with so far needed some more help than we had expected or arranged. If we are determined to become an integrated care organisation this careful management of transitions of care, to make sure everything is coordinated, is a quality gain in the making…
Attached are this week’s IT stats: IT Performance Stats 24 May 2019
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