Need to know
For #TeamEEAST Last updated: 05 May 2024 at 02:14
The next episode of our Fit for the Future podcast is now available.
Each episode, we talk to a workstream lead from the Fit for the Future improvement plan to demonstrate what achievements have taken place and how this will help to develop our Trust for the future.
This episode, Julie Hollings, Director of Communications and Engagement, and Sean Bennett, Accessibility Officer and podcast facilitator, chat with Kevin Smith, Director of Finance and Commissioning and Gita Prasad, Director of Business and Partnership.
This episode discusses the System Partnerships workstream and the impact this has for our staff and our patients.
As well as the podcast, we also have a monthly Fit for the Future update from Tom Abell. You can read this here.
Please listen to the podcast below. We hope you enjoy.
Transcript details
00:00 --> 00:20
Kevin Smith
Hello everyone. My name is Kevin Smith. I'm director of finance and commissioning at the Trust, and I've have my colleague with me, Gita Prasad, who's deputy director of business and partnerships, and I think we're here to talk to you today about the system partnerships workstream that we have under the fit for the future programme.
00:21 --> 00:31
Sean Bennett
Excellent. Thank you very much Kevin. So can you tell us about your workstream within fit for futures and what it’s aiming to achieve?
00:32--> 01:46
Kevin Smith
Yes thanks, Sean. So from the feedback we've had from partners is that the trust needs to develop as a trusted key system partner to help influence system strategy and transformation at local, regional and even national levels. We need to understand and consolidate the current situation we have with engagement and involvement within all of those systems, local, regional and national.
As part of doing that, we want to approve and implement a one to three year strategy and delivery plan for improved system working. We want to establish an effective system partnership structure and infrastructure to support strengthening relationships across the systems and embed a comprehensive system information flow then enables clear responsibility and accountability for deliverables across the system. I think what we want to do is build on some really good relationships that we have at local level, with both the business and partnerships team but also local operational managers and teams.
01:47 --> 02:00
Julie Hollings
So we talk about system working and system partnership, but it sounds very high level and important. But what does that really mean? Can you tell us really simply the difference that it'll make to our patients?
02:01 --> 03:14
Gita Prasad
Thanks, Julie. So, in terms of delivering through integrated care systems, the reason for that is so we can actually bring partnerships together. And so we are collectively planning for the needs of the population. So that's for the needs of patients of different patient groups and the central aim of integrated care systems is to integrate care, health and social care across different organizations, joining up our hospital community based services are physical, mental health, and social care services around a population. So what we are doing now instead of competing with each other as providers, were actually in collaboration. So for patients, the direct benefit there is actually about responsiveness and about making sure that we link and have consistent methods of how we want to work together for patient pathways, for delivering to patients, joining up with our Community providers for example, and also ensuring that we link in with our public and patient engagement strategy, for example, and improving our responsiveness and their local and place based area.
03:15 --> 03:30
Sean Bennett
Excellent. Thank you. So we've heard what difference it will make for patients. Can you tell us a little bit about what kind of a difference it will make for staff?
03:31 --> 04:38
Kevin Smith
Thank, Sean. So, I think one of the things our staff have issues with is the fact that they're often required to move around the patch and in doing so they then have to deal with different things in different areas. Now there are often good reasons for that, and we don't want to lose a local focus where we need it, but equally so we want to try and make ourselves more consistent across our whole region and how we approach things. So we really want to establish equitable and consistent methods of delivery and approach across the sectors and linkage to how we want our business units and departments to operate.
We are all interacting with partners and in teams and partnerships. So how we can be good allies and productive partners across the organization with colleagues, stakeholders and other partners. And I think it's to give staff that consistency in general, but equally to help understand where there's local variation and why that's necessary.
04:39 --> 04:58
Julie Hollings
I'm really interested in finding out a little bit about how we understand our partners and stakeholders and what they think of us. We have a huge variety of them, I know, across our six sectors. So what work have we done about understanding how they see us?
04:59 --> 06:25
Gita Prasad
Thanks, Julie. We've initiated and undertaken a partnership survey with our stakeholders in those six geographical areas, but also wider than that. We've included blue light collaboration's, voluntary sector partners, and other organizations that, for example, our estates teams or our digital teams might interact with as well. And we held a survey over December 2021, which concluded in January of this year. We were able to understand what they thought about EEAST’s delivery of patient care, how we're committed to improving our culture, whether we’re strong collaborator and also whether we are involved and engaged in changing alternative care pathways, which is really important to system delivery. Whether we've got a strong regional presence and also whether we communicate with our partners in a helpful and timely manner.
We were really, really pleased in that we've got some solid responses from partners and what we've been able to do is use those responses to indicate where we've got some areas that need improvement, but also where we're getting it right and actually what we can build upon in terms of having those productive and trusted partnerships. So the engagement that we've undertaken so far is very much the beginning, the starting points of what we want to do and then what we want to do with it is develop it further.
06:26 --> 06:54
Sean Bennett
Thank you very much. It's great to hear that a survey went out and that feedback is being actively sought. How are you planning on using that feedback and applying it to the work that you do? And will you be trying to gain feedback on a rolling basis and applying that to keep the work developing in the right direction?
06:55 --> 08:04
Kevin Smith
Thanks Sean, that’s some really good questions. So I think taking the last point 1st, we certainly intend to keep going back out for feedback and we periodically rerun the survey, probably thinking again later this year. I think it's really positive. We got almost 100 responses, which is really interesting feedback and as Gita mentioned, largely pretty positive.
I think, where we've got some less positive responses, that's clearly an opportunity for us and that then is giving us the opportunity to create locality action plans with both short and longer term actions and understand where we might want to dig deeper into to our relationships.
So we, we've obviously got a number of responses or people did actually leave their details and so we can respond directly to those colleagues and their organizations and really taking the feedback and using it constructively to build on. As I say, we see the areas where people have commented less positively, there's certainly areas of opportunity for us and that's what we want to do.
08:05 --> 08:15
Julie Hollings
So I'm really interested to find out what you see as the next steps. What can we see happening both for patients and staff over the next few months?
08:16 --> 09:30
Gita Prasad
Thank you, Julie. I think what we're definitely going to do is use that feedback, use what we already know about our local areas based on the intelligence that we gain from our sector leads, and make a partnership strategy. That will articulate how we envisage working with partners in the future because we know that integrated care systems are going to happen, there will be our new way of working; our new structures in those local areas.
And so it's really important for EEAST to be not only passed a seat at the table, but actively engaging and shaping how we want to work with patients. It's a great opportunity as well for us to reduce inequalities and how we can support patients accessing all services in our areas and also for us as an organization with a regional presence, to be a real partner and supportive collaborator for the future of the NHS and Health and social care.
So I think there's lots of opportunities here. To make sure that our partnership survey and all our intelligence that we gain helps us become really good partners and also have those productive trusting relationships because that's the future way of working.
09:31 --> 10:01
Kevin Smith
And I think just to add to that as well, I think we’re aware of frustrations that our staff have at various times with some of the system partners we interact with. I mean for instance, we know there are sometimes issues with 111 and the work we have to pick up from that. So this again will give us an opportunity to become more of a voice in how those services are our commissioned in how we work together with them.
10:02 --> 10:11
Julie Hollings
We hear the term and the acronym ICS a lot - Integrated care system - what exactly is an integrated care system?
10:12 --> 11:28
Gita Prasad
Thanks, Julie. An integrated care system is a local set of collaborative partners coming together around a place, a population, normally about 1.1 million. And so with us in our region, in the Eastern region, we have 6 ICS areas which are forming. They’re at different stages at the moment, but previously colleagues will have heard the term STP - sustainability transformation partnerships - And so that was the previous way that organizations came together. Now the new approach, and it will become law if the bill gets passed later this year in July, all areas have to be part of an integrated care system and that's where it brings those partnerships together around that geographical area to deliver health and social care services.
It also might go against different footprint such as county boundaries. And where, for example, acute hospitals are, but they've already been determined in terms of their footprint and that's how we at EEAST work. We work through those ICS structures.
11:29 --> 11:46
Sean Bennett
That's fantastic. Thank you. So we've heard a lot today about working with others and being open and talking to people, dealing with feedback and collaborating. Can you give us an example of a collaboration you're already involved in and give us an update on how it's going?
11:47 --> 12:55
Gita Prasad
Thank, Sean. Yes, we've got a really successful model that we developed with the fire service in Bedfordshire and that was happening during the COVID response. And actually the COVID responses taught us a lot about how we can work together quite effectively and quickly. But what we're trying to do now is use that Bedfordshire model for working with the fire service to scale up so we've got a standard way of working across the region.
That means that we'll be able to hopefully reach our patients being supported by the fire service in terms of reaching our patients in areas that we can't reach them soon enough or as soon as we'd want to. So that fire service collaboration is the beginning of a set of number of areas where we want to work with the blue light partners more effectively. Because actually we've got a lot in common with our Blue Light partners and it's a really, really good way of sharing resources within an area. So that's one of the many examples we have of successful collaborations that EEAST is undertaking at the moment with different partners.
12:56 --> 13:13
Sean Bennett
Well, that's all been very interesting to hear about. I'm sure our trust colleagues will appreciate having a resource like this to have a listen to and to deepen their understanding of the work that you're doing. Thank you very much for taking the time to speak to us and hopefully we’ll speak to you again soon.
13:14 --> 13:15
Kevin Smith
Thank you.
13:16 --> 13:17
Julie Hollings
Thank you.
13:17 --> 13:18
Gita Prasad
Thank you.
13:18 --> 13:19
Kevin Smith
Goodbye.
Published 11th March 2022