Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 3 June
June 3, 2022
On 6 February Her Majesty The Queen became the first British Monarch to celebrate a Platinum Jubilee, marking 70 years of service. To celebrate this anniversary, events and initiatives will take place over a four-day UK bank holiday weekend from Thursday 2 to Sunday 5 June and I know many of our services, wards and departments are looking to get in to the swing of the celebrations in honour of a great public servant.
While many will be enjoying the festivities, the four-day weekend does bring challenges for us and the rest of the system. This is why our urgent care provision must be as resilient as it can be so that we may be able to cope with any increase in demand. Our urgent care response is hampered by ambulance activity coming in to us from other systems and because some of our same day emergency care services are developing and not yet fully established or fully invested in. This approach is key to our acute care model for the Midland Met, so making these early strides in this space is important.
I can report that all the groups and essential support services have put together a comprehensive weekend plan outlining services that are in place over the weekend and the staffing that is in place to support this.
The plan also describes a number of contingencies should non-elective/urgent care demand exceed our capacity. We have a Week 1 plan (the week leading up to and including the bank holiday weekend) and a Week 2 plan (as previous bank holidays have shown that it is the week after the bank holiday that generates the most pressure – none of us are looking forward to Tuesday 7th June, that’s for sure).
Extra clinical staff will be on site during the bank holiday period as will a matron for both medicine and emergency care and surgical services. These colleagues will support patient flow and also support teams to maintain quality and safety.
Throughout this last week we have sought assurance from partners such as our local authorities to ensure they will have sufficient resources in place to respond to any requirements we might have. Our improving relationships with social care colleagues, particularly in Sandwell, has aided that assurance process. In addition, the Black Country CCG has given us assurance that there will be additional GP capacity across the coming days to support our community and hopefully avoid unnecessary attendances to our urgent treatment centres and emergency departments.
Daily, tactical level system calls involving ambulance colleagues will be held for all trusts in the Black Country, enabling us to escalate any concerns that we have to system leaders and ensure all trusts understand each other’s positions.
Thank you to colleagues who have put these measures in place to ensure we can be as responsive as we can be as well as continue to deliver safe, quality care.
If you are working over this Jubilee weekend – thank you. We hope you enjoy the small selection of Jubilee materials that we have provided to help you celebrate where you work.
As part of the Jubilee celebrations the Together coalition is celebrating its national Thank You Day on Sunday 5 June. The day calls on people across the country to come together to celebrate The Queen for 70 years of service, and to say a great big thank you to friends, family, colleagues, communities and organisations who have worked so hard over the last 12 months. We encourage you to join in and share your personal thanks with the hashtag #ThankYouDay, remember to tag in our Trust too. Find out more here.
Have a safe and enjoyable weekend and I do hope that all of you get some time to enjoy at least part of it.