Home | News | Thursday 14th April - Leadership message from Tom Abell, Chief Executive

Thursday 14th April - Leadership message from Tom Abell, Chief Executive

Tom Abell in front of an ambulance

As many of you are aware we had an unannounced visit from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) last week and I was proud to hear the feedback from the inspectors that our people consistently went ‘above and beyond’, showing exceptional care for patients despite the considerable pressure our service continues to be under.

CQC update

We understand that the CQC will be returning to the Trust on the 4th and 5th of May to inspect the ‘well-led’ domain, and during this time they may chose to inspect any area of the Trust on an unannounced basis.  We will let you know as soon as we are aware if this happens.

It’ll be some time until we have a draft report following their inspection but in the meantime we are working through the high level feedback the CQC have provided and the actions we are taking in response to this and will share this with you once we have it.

 

Managing demand for our services 

As we approach Easter, we will be sharing with the public and the media how people can help us to help them by clarifying when they should ring 999 and when other advice is more appropriate.

Following on from last week’s message we are continuing to take a number of practical steps to try and ease the service pressures we are experiencing. This includes:

  • We have now begun to pass 999 calls to two of our 111 providers. This is initially starting at 6 per hour, with an aim to increase this if successful.
  • In tandem with the above we are also starting a trial to pass 999 calls to community providers. This has started in the Suffolk and North East Essex system where we can pass 10-15 patients per day to other services, and we are now working to roll this out across our entire region.
  • The additional resources we secured through our new private ambulance service (PAS) tender are now starting to go into live. These are mostly commencing at 10am which is where we see increased patients waiting and rolling into rest breaks.
  • We have also secured agreement from more of our systems to fund HALOs so we can begin to substantiate this role over the course of the coming months across the Trust.

 

Please give us your views

The next round of local manager’s briefings and Q and A sessions are  due to take place on 21 April in the following sectors and departments

 

  • Herts & West Essex
  • Beds & Luton
  • Support Services
  • Training & Education
  • Volunteers

Please look out for updates on Need to Know.

These are your opportunity to put questions to senior managers at a local or departmental level so please attend if you can and/or submit your questions in advance or at the event. You can see the videos from previous events on Need to Know.

 

Please respond to the Pulse survey

Along with the annual NHS Employee Survey, everyone working in the NHS is invited to participate in quarterly pulse surveys so that we can hear from you more frequently. The latest NHS Quarterly Pulse Survey for EEAST opened on Monday 11th April and is open until the end of the month for you to share your views on working at EEAST.

I know that there have been lots of surveys recently and I completely understand if you are feeling a ‘survey fatigue’. However, if you do have a few moments, it would be great to get your feedback.

The survey is completely anonymous and confidential and closes on 30th April 2022.

Take part in the survey here

Thank you again for everything you are doing. Please take care of yourselves and each other.

Tom Abell
Chief Executive

Published 14th April 2022