Agenda item

Simon Pleydell, Interim Chief Executive, Whittington Health, and Steve Hitchins, Chair of Whittington Health presented the update to the Committee.

The Chair stated that he had requested the item in response to stories in the local press.

In the discussion the following points were made –

·         The trust had received approval from the TDA to progress their plans to develop the maternity unit to accommodate 4,700 births per year. A key part of this was the full business case that should be available by Christmas.

·         They had opened an ambulatory care centre which allowed direct access to consultant care for non-urgent cases. Since the centre had opened there had been demonstrably lower admissions.

·         Their patient experience rating for cancer care was the best in North London.

·         Their overall performance was going well and A&E numbers compared favourably with any other department in London.

·         The trust was achieving 95% of its targets.

·         At one point they had a 38% nursing vacancy rate but this was now down to 5% following a number of measures including a redesign of the local area teams.

·         The trust was still committed to becoming a foundation trust and was currently taking a pause to refresh their strategy.

·         The King’s Fund had carried out a review of the Trust and had been impressed with many pieces of work but had told them they needed to be more strategic. The slides from the King’s Trust could be shared with the Committee.

·         A new leadership team was in place and they needed to recognise the new strategic priorities.

·         It was likely that the CQC would inspect the Trust early next year and they needed a good rating to progress before they actively started moving forward with their Foundation Trust application.

·         Once the Trust could prove they were a good, safe, high quality organisation with sustainable finances they would progress their application.

·         The TDA were giving the Trust time to get into the right place for their application.

·         The local press had incorrectly reported that the Trust was abandoning their application.

·         The Trust had not been notified that they were in the group of Trusts who had been identified as candidates for merging with other NHS trusts.

·         The 4% in the cost base was causing issues but there was work underway to address this.

·         There were currently 64 Trusts in the same position as Whittington Health and many others who were worse off.

·         The cost base challenge was up to £5million depending on CCG funding decisions. There were ongoing discussions with commissioners on this issue and these were also considering the viability of the cap and collar funding methods.

·         A friends and family test had been rolled out to all staff with 74% saying they would recommend the Trust for treatment dropping to 62% who would recommend working there. There was current benchmarking underway and the Trust was within the norms of the national average. This was not considered to be good enough and they were aiming to improve.

·         There had been some pockets of discontent among staff in the past and this had not necessarily been managed in the correct way. It was vital that senior management engaged with staff and that staff understood the reasons why and how decisions were made.

·         The Trust was performing at 95% against the target for patients at A&E being seen within four hours.

·         They were encouraging a cohort of patients to come forward as patient champions.

·         There was no clinical estates plan apart from the previous one so the Trust remained committed to the Waterlow building as stated. Clinical staffing was the priority, then IT then the estates plan may be reviewed.

·         There had been capacity issues in meeting the 14 day cancer target and planning had been done in partnership with GPs to address this. Not all patients were able to or wanted to come in during that 14 day window due to other commitments so that would skew the figures.

·         The Trust and the LA had discussed the appointment of the new Chief Executive and an announcement would be made on this early in November. After this a new Director of Finance would be appointed and then further staff would be recruited from there.

·         There was an established partnership group who had provided very constructive feedback. Simon Pleydell also met with the Co-Chairs every month to discuss the latest concerns.

·         There were regular briefings for staff and monthly newsletters were circulated. There was also a Board Matters podcast that staff could access. Communication was never perfect and the Trust was determined to keep working on ensuring all staff were informed of the latest developments.

·         Periodic staff turnover created uncertainty although information did go out to staff regularly. Once the permanent Chief Executive appointment had been made this would start to turn around these processes.

·         The partnership group included representatives from all of the unions.

·         The cancer services restructure applied only to very specialist services at UCL, Bart’s and the Royal London.

·         45% of attendances at the ambulatory care centre were redirects from A&E. The others were significantly from GP referrals so the centre was not open access in a general sense.

·         It was estimated that it would take two to three years to progress the FT application.

·         The national changes to the CQC inspection process and to the FT application process had slowed the process down leading to many Trusts’ applications going on pause.

·         There were still some issues with outpatient appointments systems in some specialities. In Rheumatology consultants’ sickness had caused problems and the Trust had worked on this and the situation had improved.

·         Reports that Whittington Health was too small to go for FT status were inaccurate.

·         Clinical care and quality of services was key as was the vital support from the local community.

The Chair thanked Simon Pleydell and Steve Hitchins for attending.

RESOLVED:

That the update be noted.