TRANSFORMING CARE INSTITUTE

Press here for the TCI video

Dear Colleague, It is hard to believe that it has been two years since we began our exciting partnership with the Virginia Mason Institute in Seattle to help us bring about the improvements we want to see to help us realise our vision of proving the safest and kindest healthcare in the NHS. On the one hand, the time seems to have flown by but, when I take a moment to stop and reflect on our journey so far, it is incredible to see how much has been done in a relatively short space of time. Today (Thursday) marks a real milestone in that journey as we welcome colleagues from NHS Improvement (NHSI) to the Trust to look at some of that work. Among those visiting our Trust today are Greg Madden, Senior Development Advisor; Kathy McLean, Executive Medical Director and Fran Steele, Delivery and Improvement Director. During their visit, the representatives of NHSI will join Trust colleagues in the workplace—the genba—to see for themselves the improvements we are making. Their tour will take them onto wards, into our Emergency Department and into areas such as the Booking Office. They will also see the work we are carrying out in the Transforming Care Institute and through our Leadership Academy as well as meeting, and holding discussions with myself and my fellow Board members and members of the Transformational Guiding Team. But most importantly, the team from NHSI will be meeting with colleagues who have been undertaking this transformational work to hear first hand their experiences. These focus groups will look at the work that has been carried out to date on our first four ‘Value Streams’ - Respiratory Discharge, the Sepsis Pathway, Recruitment and Opthalmology—as well as our work through Lean for Leaders and Advanced Lean Training. Some of the work we will be highlighting to our colleagues from NHSI includes: Respiratory Discharge 32 non-value adding hours removed from the patient process; 1,357 clinical steps removed, allowing increased time spent with patients; increased number of patient being sent home by lunchtime. Sepsis 12 quality improvements made within the sepsis pathway including use of screening tools, sepsis trolley, reduction in late observations and blood culture processing; 11.5 hours of nonvalue adding time removed from screening for sepsis , diagnosis of sepsis and delivery of sepsis bundle pathway; rollout of Sepsis Trolley to AMU and Emergency Departments at RSH and PRH. Recruitment Lead time from the identification of a vacancy to the new staff member’s first day reduced by 10 weeks from 135 days to 63 days; delay in receiving candidate references reduced from 21 days to 1 day; length of time from approval to post being advertised reduced to 1 day; lead time from close of advert to interview reduced by 15 days. Ophthalmology 52 day reduction in the time from receipt of referral until first contact is made with patient; 100% reduction in the number of Booking staff unaware of overall process for sending patient letters; planned staff training to assist patients who need guiding through the creation of an educational video; reducing the number of Ophthalmology clinic letters from 17 letters to 1. As well as highlighting what we have already achieved, we will be seeking to understand the challenges we are likely to face in the coming three years of our partnership with Virginia Mason, so that we can design strategies to mitigate these risks. This promises to be a very interesting visit, and we look forward to sharing with you the feedback we receive in due course.