Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 29 March

March 29, 2019

Next week our school nursing colleagues join the Trust. Or re-join us in many cases. As I have written before, this change represents an important opportunity for the future of our work with schools in the borough. Many colleagues have written to me and to Nick Makwana about the opportunities that arise from the upcoming changes. But of course, all of that starts with welcoming and supporting people in joining the organisation, and being open to learning from them about what works well elsewhere. I very much hope that departments that induct and support new joiners in the Trust are ready to recognise the priority that we need to give to the teams now with us. We would all recognise that the joining experience can be a daunting thing, and not always one that works smoothly. Bethan Downing is working with others on precisely that, and over coming weeks we will finish our project on digital identity, so that for every person in our teams, and every job, we are clear what IT permissions are needed, including for Unity, and can smoothly establish set up before people join – and indeed have an up to date email and phone list too. It may seem a thing of detail, but actually it is this detail that makes working here easier or just more time consuming.

There are two days left to get your PDR booking loaded via Connect or ESR. During April, May and June all of us will have our Aspiring to Excellence appraisal. Out of that we will of course get a potential and performance rating for 2018-19, but also a discussion about our objectives for improvement in 2019-20. The moderation process to ensure fairness across teams and the Trust will take place in July. It is vital that you do have your PDR, not least as it the gateway to your own training plan. That plan is then the gateway to funding, and to scheduling time for that training. Not all training, of course, is time off a work role – and from mid-April we kick off access to our play domain for Unity. There will be more details with the QIHD in April, but the play domain will give you a safe space to test your Unity skills before the big go-live. The Board’s digital committee agreed those go-live criteria earlier today and we can begin now a countdown to meeting those criteria and switching over to the new system this summer.

Of course, Unity is not the only slightly unclear deadline with which we are operating. My usual Brexit update is attached. The key message locally, and for the NHS, remains the same, notwithstanding national headlines. We have a clear plan for supply of medicines and equipment.  We believe we have secured all our data within UK based databases and servers, but as ever would ask anyone concerned that we have missed something to speak up. That includes the servers for the new Imaging partners that we have, based in the Netherlands and Australia, who will be contributing to our imaging reporting from next month. This week’s Clinical Leadership Executive heard a very clear description from Sarah Yusuf, our Group Director, about the benefits that the partnership will bring for our existing radiology colleagues, as well as for patients and for clinical partners.

SWB Brexit Bulletin – 29 March 2019

April’s TeamTalk is out now, and I know that the hottest of topics at the sessions related to car parking changes. I attach at the foot of this message some frequently asked questions, as we move towards our changes this spring. We started holding public meetings about the building works for the multi-storey car parks, and you know that the GP practice we are building at Sandwell is now approved. That means changes to who can buy a car parking ticket, with restrictions if you live within a mile of our sites, and temporary restrictions if you work in the Elizabeth Suite or in Trinity House. A free car park at New Square starts this spring, and we will be looking to relocate volunteers, as well as some colleagues who have not volunteered to that facility during the construction period. I am more than happy to tackle individual questions or concerns, but after a considerable period of engagement and consultation we have had to make some decisions, conscious of the disappointment for some people that those decisions bring. Pay as you go tickets and out of hours tickets will become a much bigger part of the future of our car parks, designed to recognise a shift to car sharing and public transport in the future too. We are continuing to create spaces on our sites where we can, and are exploring other options to do so.

Car-parking-FAQs-29-March-2019.pdf

As we are almost at 1 April we have begun to sign contracts for care volumes and finance for 2019-20.  Our local CCG have substantially invested in both our community and hospital services and we now have to achieve the shortened waiting times and increased amounts of patients that we have promised. Individual services are familiar with the ask, and the numbers, and it is this work which will both improve local health and ensure our ability to invest in new services and extra staffing in the coming twelve months. Of course, this places a premium on great coding and counting, but importantly we have also agreed a funding model which allows us to re-design some outpatient services – retaining income whilst treating patients in different locations and in different ways, including by phone or Skype. As we look to tackle unnecessary travel, disruption, and to improve timeliness of care this is a real opportunity to be inventive and to learn from others about what care we can safely provide remotely.

Exactly the same idea is driving the work we are looking at around care homes. We have an established team winning awards, and doing great work, in neighbouring care homes. Before Christmas we expanded that work in Sandwell, and that is now funded for the year ahead. But we are also exploring the options, and research potential, of being a national pilot site to connect acute and older people’s medicine with patients in care home beds, without the need for those people to be transported into A&E or into an acute bed. With an ageing population, we need to be thoughtful about what might work to better support complex patients. Care homes, like the schools with whom I started this week’s message, are a key part of our health efforts locally, and a vital partnership that we want to improve. By the time we move to Midland Met in 2022, but in truth well before, we want to become outstanding in ensuring that only someone who needs acute admission receives that service, because we both have alternatives and anticipate need.

Attached are this weeks stats: IT Performance Stats 29 March 2019

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