Richard talks about: our priorities for 2023/24

Richard Beeken, Chief Executive

Last month I wrote about the work we were doing to agree and finalise our plans for the new financial year. Like most NHS organisations we are balancing a bleak financial situation along with national expectations of how to safely staff our services along with recovery and restoration of services.

Since launching our strategy in 2022, we have already made good progress against the priorities we agreed last year. We have:

• Developed and launched the underpinning strategic plans/ frameworks including the Fundamentals of Care, People Plan and Digital Plan

• Developed and launched our new values and behavioural framework

• Made progress in collaborating with our colleagues in the Place Based Partnerships especially in integrated discharge planning and admission avoidance

• Created the Midland Met Programme company, as we continue to prepare for opening.

We are on track, but still have work to do on:

• Finalising our approach for Continuous Quality Improvement, which will launch after opening MMUH

• Improving our financial position in line with our three year financial strategy

• Opening MMUH safely, by reducing our bed occupancy through admission avoidance and patient journey improvements

• Improving staff and patient experience

• Improving quality governance and assurance – for example against new, Care Quality Commission (CQC) standards.

Our strategic initiatives, which will drive our strategic objectives are:

• Fundamentals of Care, to improve standards of quality, safety and experience for patients. This work will also support improving our CQC rating

• Use of Resources, to improve our financial sustainability

RICHARD'S LAST WORD

• People Plan, to improve staff experience

• Place Based Partnerships, in Sandwell and Ladywood and Perry Barr, to support seamless care in the population we serve

• MMUH opening, supporting the transformation of our services and estates, together with social and economic regeneration.

Within these strategic initiatives we have agreed a series of goals for 2023/24 – 2026/27 which directly map to the national expectations set out in NHS England’s operational planning guidelines, alongside important goals to for us as an organisation in achieving our long term strategic objectives.

Finally, we have identified a series of priorities for 2023/24, which are, in essence, the first stage of each strategic initiative. These priorities reflect what things we think will make the biggest difference in delivering those medium term goals:

• Fundamentals of Care will focus on harm-free care and communication

• Use of resources will focus on reducing bank and agency spend, and increasing elective activity to deliver 104 per cent of activity in 2019/20

• People Plan will focus on developing our leaders, at all levels

• Place Based Partnerships will focus on a high quality patient journey, from community, through hospital and back to the community

• MMUH Opening will focus on reduced bed occupancy to open safely and improve patient safety and experience. Over the next few months, the exec team and I will be planning some ‘town hall’ sessions across the organisation to discuss these plans with you in more detail. Do come along and find out how you can contribute to our plans. More detail will follow in our daily communications bulletins.