Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust AGM 2012/13

I realise that I have not written anything for my blog for a long time.  It has been a good summer so I have been otherwise engaged on holiday and working on my allotment.

I have just come back from our local hospital trust AGM.   This is a trust under special measures and heavily involved in the Jimmy Savile inquiry. Yet all is not lost –there is good news as well.

There was not a single case of MRSA during the year 2012/2013.  They recorded their lowest number of C Diff infections ever. – down by 50%.

The Hyper-acute Stroke Unit is the best in the region according to the Royal College of Physicians.

The hospital and the spinal injuries centre were at the centre of the Paralympics opening ceremony. A statue of Sir Ludwig Guttmann has been installed in front of the Spinal Injuries Centre

Three members of staff received national awards during the year.

In the first quarter of 2013/2014 even the HSMR has dropped below 100, it is now 97!

As the Chief Executive, Anne Eden, said “It was the best of times and the worst of time”.

The hospital had over a million contacts with patients and 5770 babies were born.

There have been service development and a £5M capital investment in A&E is being undertaken.

As part of their response to the Keogh report they have started  an “Every Patient Counts” action plan designed to improve services.

But the future is challenging as the health and social care economy has been under stress for many years and will be even tougher in future years. The CCG which is a major contributor to the income of the hospital is looking at a shortfall in its budget next year. There are difficult decision to be made in this year’s commissioning round which starts now.

The cost of the staff in the hospital accounts for 59% of the total expenditure of the trust.

There was a presentation by the emergency surgery team on how they have been redesigning the way in which they manage things.  They admit 3800 patients a year of whom 500 are over 80 years of age.  They see three times that number altogether.

I found it a bit confusing when they talked about emergency surgery that does not need to be done that day and the fact that their patient could be reasonably well.  Some patients can even stay at home.   This is obviously a version of ‘emergency’ that is new to me.

It was amusing to hear surgeons talking about holistic care!

The CE presented some internal awards to staff who had “Gone the extra mile” for patients.   These were people nominated by their colleagues and patients and from the hundreds of nominations a small number were selected.  They were both clinical and non-clinical staff and it was a nice way to end the formal part of the event.  Congratulations to those who received an award.

There was a final event when the statue of ‘Poppa’ Ludwig Guttmann was formally donated to Stoke Mandeville Hospital by the charity that had raised the money for it and other projects. http://www.poppaguttmanncelebration.org/

At the end of the meeting there was time reserved for the audience to ask questions.  I will discuss what happened then in the next blog.