In the previous blog I gave my own highlights of the
Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust AGM.
After the Chief Executive gave her presentation and the
finance director gave his summary of the financial situation we heard from the
leaders of the emergency surgery teams. They described how they had changed the
service, what is called reconfiguration, and how the new service was producing
better outcomes for patients & reducing mortality rates. Good news.
At the end of the event there was time set aside for the
public to ask questions. I have no idea
how many members of the public were present but I was virtually the only person
who asked questions.
Why is it that people don’t ask questions in formal board
meetings? I reckon most people know the
answer to that one.
I asked a couple of questions:
The first was about the campaign to restore an A&E department
to the High Wycombe Hospital site. A petition with 16,000 signatures has been
organised.
There
are 16,000 people in the south of the county who believe that there should be
an A & E on the Wycombe Hospital site.
Can
I ask that the Communications teams from the Clinical Commissioning Groups and the trust remind us, on a
regular basis, about the good clinical, organisational and financial reasons
why, in the present circumstances, there can only be one A & E in the
county?
This is an on-going issue for those who live in High
Wycombe. The A&E department was
closed in 2005 after a public consultation and replace with a minor injuries
type of service.
As we know from other examples of such closures the local
population is incredibly loyal to their local hospital. MPs too! So the story
here is how to sell the difficult and complex reasons, hopefully evidence
based, for such closures.
In my opinion the only way to tell the story is to keep
it simple and be persistent.
However the audience was asked what else could be done to
explain the reasons why there are only resources for one A&E department in
the hospital.
My suggestion is that the leaders of the campaign should
meet with senior clinicians and managers (and the commissioners) to have an informal,
facilitated discussion and look at the evidence.
As for how to improve the conversation between the
hospital executives and the patients is something to explore in another blog.
*****************
The second question I asked was about the way they manage
complaints.
Can
I ask that the board measures its performance on managing complaints by using
the following as outcome measures?
a)
Is
the complainant satisfied at the end of the process
b)
has the trust learnt from the complaints
c)
has
the trust acted on the learning.
Normally the first thing that the board reports is that
they replied to people within the required time. This is important of course,
but I reckon that most people would say the best test of a good complaints
service is: was I happy with the result?
I hope that the
trust may consider that a different approach will improve the way people think
about the way complaints are managed.
They expressed some interest in this approach and said
that they are trying to do something like this.
They have been contacting people by telephone after the complaint has
been closed, especially complex complaints. But they have not been recording
this activity. It sounds as if they are looking to improve the experience of
complaining.
They did say that they get many more accolades than complaints.
This is good to hear.
