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Our financial improvement journey

July 15, 2024

Over the last month, the financial improvement team have held workshops with staff and clinical groups. These have been designed to get your thoughts, suggestions and ideas on things that can help us to deliver our £44million financial improvement target. Thank you to everyone who took the time to engage with these workshops.

The main topic of each workshop was an ideas brainstorm on how we can help generate more income for the Trust and where are there are opportunities to improve our ways of working, that will result in savings. A variety of ideas were put forward, ranging from improving the letters we send to patients and GPs, to optimising the use of our resources such as the utilisation of our estates and facilities and our clinical time. Here’s a flavour of the ideas that were put forward:

Reviewing and reducing waste as much as possible, ranging from plastic cups to clinical waste.

  • Can we buy products with less packaging, so we don’t need to pay for recycling costs
  • Are we sorting our clinical waste correctly?
  • Could the Trust become a paperless Trust?
  • Could we switch to reusable cups?
  • Can we prevent unused stock going to a landfill?

Solutions for reducing the number of patients who do not attend appointments (DNA)

  • Reviewing the accuracy of patient contact details to avoid delays in letters arriving
  • Calling patients from a dedicated phone so our numbers don’t show up as blocked, but as SWB
  • Avoid DNAs caused by transport issues: ensure letters detail if consultation is face to face or online and what to do if patients have transportation issues

We will now review these initial ideas with the clinical groups and our finance colleagues to see what might bring the best improvement and then prioritise them for delivery.

There will be some further workshops – including some held online following your feedback – so please do keep an eye out for these.

However, you don’t need to wait until a workshop to submit your thoughts and ideas – you can tell us anytime! Remember – the people on the frontline often have the best ideas – so please do come forward and let us know yours. No idea is a bad idea.

You can submit your ideas via this online form: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/financialimprovement

Or if you prefer you can email swbh.recoverypmo@nhs.net.

We will be in regular conversation with you as we go through this journey – the financial wellbeing of our organisation doesn’t just sit with finance – we all have a part to play in enabling us to achieve our goal.