ONE thing that has become clear in terms of the future of the NHS is the need for greater collaboration between organisations and service providers.
As a Trust we obviously have our own vision and areas of focus but over the past few years we have all been encouraged to think about how we can work more closely with partners to provide better, more joined up and more efficient services for patients.
On a local level we have been heavily involved in developing the Healthier Fylde Coast strategy with our partners in the NHS and councils with the aim of making sure people living on the Fylde coast have the very best health and care services possible.
A draft five year strategy has been produced which looks to address a number of local challenges and has already been influenced by a huge amount of feedback from staff, clinicians, wider stakeholders and people living on the Fylde coast.
The first draft of the strategy is now being taken ‘on the road’ to seek the views of staff on the effectiveness of the priorities to meet the challenges ahead.
As part of a wide programme of engagement, a number of sessions are being held throughout March and I would encourage as many of you as possible to try and attend one of the sessions to get a better understanding of the strategy and share ideas about how it can be best delivered.
As I have said many times recently I am a firm believer that it is the people that provide the services and those who use them who need to be involved in any future developments. You will have the inside knowledge about what works well and where we need to make improvements. All your views are important to this piece of work so please make sure you take the chance to have your say.
There are limited spaces available at each session so please book your place as soon as possible by visiting https://www.healthierlsc.co.uk/fyldecoast/our-strategy-2020-2025/book-now/staff-sessions.
You can find more information about the local health and care partnership and the work in relation to the strategy on the Healthier Fylde Coast website https://www.healthierlsc.co.uk/fyldecoast/our-strategy-2020-2025
Length of stay and patient safety
IN terms of partnerships the Trust this week kicked off a piece of work primarily focusing on length of stay.
Over the next six weeks we are working closely internally and externally with a number of local partners from health and social care to look at how we can improve patient flow. We know that at any one time there is generally a ward’s worth of patients who are fit for discharge recovering in a bed and we have known for some time that we have not achieved enough early discharges of fit patients to help this flow.
What we do know now is that this is a patient safety issue. The best way to make patients safe is to make sure they are being treated in the right place and right bed and that isn’t always a hospital bed. The work over the six weeks will help us gather some real evidence about where the problems are and how we can start to make improvements for staff and for patients.