Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 30 November
December 5, 2018
You cannot have missed the media hubbub which has accompanied the launch of our first Christmas Charity single. 79p makes a fantastic stocking filler and will help to propel us up the charts. Thank you to everyone involved. In addition to a good cause and a lot of fun, we are sustaining the relationships we are building with local schools. That must be right as we look to the workforce of the future and also to our mission to promote health in our communities.
One chart we already top is the national flu vaccination league table. That’s right, our Trust is, currently, the best in the country for flu vaccination among patient facing staff. Again a big thank you. And let’s keep going. We have been vaccinating this week overnight and cannot let up. Neighbouring Trusts are starting to see admissions with flu and we need our vigilance high. It’s not a cold. It’s much more serious than that.
Our teams in A&E are at the forefront of work to treat emergency admissions. Over the last year we have implemented some clever projects to try and get the right patient to the right place. I have written here about SMART and SPA! In and out of hours however many thousands rely on our ED teams, and they in your support. Our second LiA event with those teams this week produced a great vibe around work to change the relationship between emergency care and radiology. But it’s clear there is much more to do to get communication right in the departments, to make sure pain relief is available on arrival and to ensure care is safe, and staff wellbeing secured, overnight. We will keep working to do just that.
Thank you to everyone who voted in our QIHD poster contest. Lots of people have mentioned to me how inspiring the posters are as a tribute to collective improvement effort. But someone has to win, and the distinguished judging panel on Thursday will award our £500 prizes, and the big one, £5,000, to the very best entry. Get thinking now about your entry next year. QIHD time is precious and provides a real opportunity to put in place service improvements, both big and small, that make a huge difference. Our challenge of course is to use the posters to see what someone else has done that we could copy. That is why the posters will go “on tour” around our sites in the new year.
The Board meets on Thursday at Sandwell. Top of the agenda is investments and changes we have planned in radiology. It is good news that the department have largely got on top of some recent backlogs, but we aim to enter 2019/20 able to guarantee waiting times not just for scans but for reports. And before you ask, of course we are exploring AI solutions, but we want to sustain and increase the availability of skilled clinicians to talk and to interpret results.
Over the next few weeks we will be looking to confirm our capital investments in neonatal services to improve quality, and to finalise plans to invest in the City site to make sure it remains useable through to the opening of Midland Met. The Trust is on track to deliver our financial plans this year, and that gives us scope to ensure we have the right facilities. The same of course is true of our IT, and every effort continues to sort out both the underlying issues and specific infuriation like the Winscribe difficulties we have, and technology support to midwifery. Frontline clinicians have joined our Board committee to make sure that the reality of our challenges is clear. The initial WiFi deployment, long promised, is now in situ and we are into a testing phase. We cannot go live with Unity until a number of conditions are met, of which WiFi cover is one. Do please keep reporting incidents as you have them. From January incidents raised with the help desk will only be closed with your agreement as the end user, and we are also recruiting mystery shoppers who will be asked monthly whether they believe IT here is improving. There is an absolute commitment to get this right and no naivety about the difficulties. Our printer Elf Squad are out and about in coming days trying to fix your printer issues.
Attached are this week’s IT statistics: IT Performance Stats 30 November 2018
Monday sees the formal launch of applications to be a Pioneer Team within our weconnect programme. Do take a look at the enrolment information and see if this opportunity is for you and your team. There will be plenty of support, a little money, and some privileges, freedoms and permissions, that successful teams will get, as we look to make working here both simpler and a little more rewarding.
weconnect Pioneer Teams Programme Application Form
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