This week senior leaders from across East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust met to start a conversation that will be ongoing for some months now to shape and agree our refreshed clinical strategy.
This is one of the most important strategies the Trust will develop and it is critical we engage as many colleagues, patients and people from across the wider health and social care system locally and in Lancashire as a whole before it is finally signed off.
I want the end result to be a clear direction of what we can deliver as an organisation for the population of Pennine Lancashire and, indeed Lancashire and South Cumbria as a whole, as well as conceding to the constraints we are working with.
When people start talking about a strategy I know it can be tempting to turn off and think it’s something high level and out of touch with day to day life either within the Trust or out in our communities. Something that doesn’t feel connected to what’s going on in reality, on the ground, in a busy provider in the NHS.
But one of the reasons I wanted colleagues to help kick start the conversation was to ensure exactly the opposite was true. The document does need to be high level, ambitious and clearly articulate our aspirations to deliver outstanding care for the future – but we all should be able to relate to it too.
We have an excellent team here at ELHT – the best – and I want to harness those great minds to make sure what we set out is a plan that reflects what we think we can and should do. I know there is no one more ambitious than colleagues and that they will push and pull us further than we could ever hope to go.
And whilst we call it a strategy, it’s really just a plan.
Taking our Trust vision which provides a clear statement about where we want to be, our values and behaviours which shape how we will get there and some really clear, tangible goals to achieve. We have a strong culture of continuous improvement which unpins everything we do and we outline the tactical activity that needs to be done in simple delivery programmes that everyone can understand and relate to.
That’s important because every single person has a role to play in achieving our aims.
It’s a well known story but bears repeating about the janitor working at NASA when President JFK visited one day. The space enthusiast greeted the man and asked him ‘So, what do you do here?’ And the man famously replied: ‘I’m helping to put a man on the moon.’
I’m reminded of this every time I walk the corridors of Royal Blackburn Teaching Hospital, where I am based day to day, or visit one of our sites or teams across the Trust. Sometimes it seems there are colleagues working away in every corner of the building or creating bee lines across Lancashire supporting people in the community.
As one of the biggest local employers, with over 9,000 colleagues in the ELHT family, I can’t hope to know or recognise everyone and it pains me to think I might walk past someone who recognises me and I don’t say ‘hello’.
But I do feel confident they will be helping us to get to the moon.
Of course, we won’t do this on our own. The clinical strategy will be inextricably linked to national NHS plans, to the ambitions of our newly created Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board, to the newly created Provider Collaborative Board and to plans in Pennine Lancashire where we have very specific geographical and demographical health-based challenges.
It will also need to be very firmly supported by what we call ‘enabling’ plans – things like our estates and facilities work to ensure our infrastructure and most noticeably our buildings are fit for purpose and able to deliver the environment we need to thrive and care for people in the most safe, personal and effective way.
It’s complex, no doubt. Balancing elective surgical or medical procedures with integrated care, our ambitions around rapid diagnostic facilities and pathways, outreach programmes including virtual wards, community support and tertiary services. And then there is urgent and emergency care – a not insignificant challenge which continues to exercise our minds daily, but so incredibly important to get ‘right’.
But put simply I think we want to work with our colleagues across Lancashire and South Cumbria, level up provision for everyone who needs it, get people diagnosed and treated as quickly and effectively as possible and remove the frustrations people experience when dealing with the huge and complex organisation that is the entire NHS.
This is a biggie. Standardising things won’t be easy and we’ll need energy, enthusiasm and a new approach to things like digital technology to help us smooth out our services with colleagues in primary care and those working out in the community to provide seamless end-to-end support. The ongoing Electronic Patient Record (EPR) will be instrumental in this.
This plan, once fully developed, will set out a direction for the Trust for the next five or even 10 years. Then, of course, we challenge ourselves to deliver it – and more no doubt – for the benefit of patients and their families and our staff.
If you have thoughts and ideas, suggestions or experiences, that would help us as we continue with this conversation I would genuinely love to hear them. You can drop me a line or link in when opportunities arise to discuss the clinical strategy both within the hospital or externally within the system or the community.
I will drop a note here when those touchpoints arise but, in the meantime, if you see me out and about feel free to say hello and tell me what you think.
Martin