Agenda item

To provide information to the Health and Wellbeing Board on the newly launched five year strategy at London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust.

Lisa Knight (Chief Nurse, LNWUHT) introduced the report, which presented the 5-year strategy for LNWUHT, which had been ratified by the Trust Board. She advised the Board that the strategy had been developed over the last year with patients, staff, and local organisations. The document was a statement of where the Trust was now and how it wanted to develop and engage with partners over the next 5 years. There had been good engagement on the strategy, and she requested that LNWUHT came back to the Board for a future update.

James Biggin-Lamming (Director of Strategy and Transformation, LNWUHT) spoke in more detail about how the strategy had been developed, highlighting the following key points:

·         Almost 900 patients had responded to the multi-lingual survey about their care and their aspirations for their care, which had been translated into several local languages. 2,400 staff had input at various points what their hopes for the organisation were and what could be done together to improve, and there had been significant engagement from partner organisations.

·         The new vision was to have quality at the heart of the Trust. Central to the Strategy was the ambition to have consistent, best practice quality in the care provided, and as an employer and partner. Four objectives underpinned that vision;

o   Objective 1 was to provide high quality, timely and equitable care in a sustainable way.

o   Objective 2 was to be a high-quality employer where staff felt like they belonged and were empowered to provide excellent services and grow their careers.

o   Objective 3 focused on basing care on high quality, responsive and seamless non-clinical and administration services. James Biggin-Lamming informed the Board he was proud to have an objective in the strategy around admin support services as clinical care did not rely solely on clinical staff but also those working ‘behind the scenes’ such as procurement, HR, and finance. If their work was done effectively this freed up time for clinicians to do more with patients. This workstream was also in response to patient interactions with admin staff not always being constructive such as booking appointments and so the Trust was determined to do that in a much better way.

o   Objective 4 was to build high quality, trusted ways of working with local people and partners to improve the health outcomes of communities together. This included working with primary care, social care, mental health, the voluntary sector and patients, with the Trust as an anchor organisation within that partnership.

·         The details of the strategy were available on the Trust website and included measures and actions to track the strategy. The Health and Wellbeing Board were invited to support the strategy.

The Chair invited comments and questions from those present, with the following issues raised:

·         The Board welcomed the strategy and asked whether there were any specific asks of the wider health and wellbeing system. They were advised that under the partnership workstream there were opportunities to work on how the Trust trained and recruited new workforces. One area that the Trust would be investing in was the Elective Orthopaedic Centre at Central Middlesex Hospital and new roles would be created there including admin, specialists, Health Care Assistants, apprenticeships, Nursing Associates, Therapy Assistants and Physician Assistant.

·         The Board asked how the Trust would know they had been successful in their objectives. They were advised that there were 12 measures highlighted in the strategy for tracking the success of each objective, and the outcomes the Trust hoped to see as a result of the actions taken. For each action, the strategy set out where the Trust was, what top quartile performance looked like, and how the Trust aimed to get to top quartile over the next 5 years. For example, the Trust would know if they were an anti-racist organisation if staff wanted to recommend the organisation as a place to work and through levels of bullying within the organisation. There should be steps along the way where the Trust would start to feel different and feel movement towards top quartile, and if it was not seeing those changes then there would be a need to return to the action plan to review. As part of this, new measures were being created to collate that information and measure progress.

·         The Board highlighted the challenge for the Trust that, whilst it might be making huge improvements, public opinion might not follow as quickly, therefore it was imperative to have its own qualitative information alongside the feedback it collected.

·         The Board highlighted the emphasis on Ealing Hospital in the ‘our sites’ section of the strategy and queried the reason behind that. They were advised that the full strategy document included more detail about all three sites, but the emphasis the Board had noticed was likely a reaction to public belief that the hospital would be closed. Prior to Covid, as part of the previous Trust strategy, the plan had been for Ealing Hospital to close. This was no longer the case and the Trust had worked hard with the people of Ealing to inform them that their local hospital was not closing, but there were members of the public who still did not believe it would not close. 

RESOLVED:

i)              To note the report and agree to receive an update on an annual basis on the progress of the strategy.