My part in Midland Met Sandwell

from colleagues as they use the opportunity to plan how their areas will work for them and to review their care pathways.

We also host benchmark room tours so that departments can see their areas and share feedback to ensure the provision will be to the correct specification and of the highest quality.

Within our team, we are all responsible for our areas. For my part, I focus on clinical engagement about any outstanding design completion and equipment provision, liaison with construction contractor teams during the construction handover phase, all the way through to the commissioning and moving in activities. We have regular team catch-ups, stakeholder calls and meetings and a lot of contact with the team at Balfour Beatty.

In what ways will our new hospital help to shape your role for the better?

What part does your role contribute to the Midland Met project?

Working in commissioning within the NHS focuses on assessing needs, planning and prioritising, purchasing and monitoring health services to get the best health outcomes. A key aspect is ensuring our readiness to move, planning and supporting the transition into the new facility.

Given the size and complexity of Midland Met, we work across the entire project with clinical and operational teams to get things right for when we move into our new hospital.

My role involves working closely with stakeholders to review their requirements against the brief and keeping them informed of progress and any challenges we may need to work through together.

How are you preparing for the opening of Midland Met in your team/ department?

Being a senior commissioning manager gives me a unique insight into the inner workings of our hospital. The team and I host site tours every Friday, and they prove invaluable to getting feedback and hearing

It is the biggest project our Trust has undertaken, and it has the potential to make a real impact in terms of the care we deliver and how we support our communities for years to come.

In my role, it means supporting all the different teams and areas and equipping them with the knowledge they need to make service changes before we open in 2024. For example, several clinical pathways need to be changed to ensure patients receive safe and seamless care when we open.

By successfully adapting our services and focusing on our community services, we will transform our services, and that is a significant change for us and those who rely on our services.

The biggest benefit that Midland Met will bring in your opinion is...

A fully integrated acute hospital with streamlined patient pathways will help us deliver on our strategic ambitions for our patients as part of our 3Ps strategy. It will equip our clinical and operational teams and support them to deliver the highest quality care in first class innovative facilities.

Across the UK our population is ageing. Frailty impacts older people, typically those aged 65+. Nationally, pre-COVID, between 5 per cent and 10 per cent of all accident and emergency attendances and 30 per cent of patients in acute medical units were older and living with frailty. It is people in this group that are more at risk of adverse health outcomes such as falls, disability, admission to hospital, or the need for long term care.

Our Trust serves a population with a high proportion of elderly patients, complex needs, multiple comorbidities and increasing frailty. Understanding these statistics and in a bid to support our frail population as effectively as we can, we’ve set about overhauling our frailty services.

Emma Hibbs, Trainee Advanced Clinical Practitioner (ACP), works in our growing frailty intervention team that currently has nine members. It is a multi-disciplinary team working to transform our frailty services before we move into Midland Met, providing as much frailty same day emergency care as possible.

The team includes ACPs, doctors, physiotherapists, occupational therapists