Public board meeting

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The Board met in public last week (Thursday 26th November) and discussed a range of topics including the culture within the Trust, the make ready concept and clinical quality.

Sarah Boulton, Trust Chair, and Chief Executive Robert Morton updated the Board on the issues they have been dealing with and the range of people they have met.   Highlights included meeting with staff at the staff engagement forum in October alongside station visits and meeting a number of MPs at Westminster.

Robert updated the Board on the successful implementation of the new Cleric CAD in Bedford EOC and thanked everyone involved in helping this from the project team, EOC and road staff through to IT teams and support staff.  Robert also alerted the Board to a recent brake pipe issue which was identified by our fleet team which potentially affected the ambulance fleet. He thanked the fleet team for their extraordinary work in ensuring every vehicle was checked within a 24-30 hour period, which shows the strength of our internal fleet team.

Robert also briefed the Board on the recent quarterly review held with the NHS Trust Development Authority which went well.  Performance clearly is challenged at the present time and a recovery action plan is being developed with our commissioners to help improve performance.  As well as increasing our capacity (we are close to meeting the target to recruit 400 student paramedics this year) we will also be reviewing our current operational model as part of the performance review.  It is likely that at the next Board meeting in January some proposals will be presented.

Dr Andy Carson, Medical director, introduced a patient story from January this year. The patient talked about the wait she experienced for the ambulance and then the subsequent hand over delay at hospital. The patient was extremely complimentary about the crew. This generated a conversation about tail breaches (where we have taken over a certain amount of time to get to patients). Director of Nursing and Clinical Quality, Sandy Brown, talked about a review the clinical team had carried out to investigate the impact of any such delays on patient care in August and assured the Board that they had not found any that had caused harm. The report will be presented to the next Board meeting in January.

Sandy then updated the Board on quality and safety. He noted that Serious Incidents were significantly down on last year whilst the Trust received 309 compliments from the public in September and October compared to 199 complaints, reflecting the good care our staff provide to patients.

The Board approved a cultural audit to be undertaken and concept of moving to a make ready service.

You can see all the Board papers tabled at the meeting on our website.

Published 3rd December, 2015

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