Lancashire Care Blog WEDNESDAY, 29 OCTOBER 2014 Welcome from the Chief Operating Officer My name is Sue Moore and I am the new Chief Operating Officer for Lancashire Care. I moved back to Lancashire from Birmingham earlier this year and I’m really pleased to be back in my home county. I grew up in Burnley and I support the mighty Clarets so I was even more pleased that I was back home to see their success in returning to the Premier League! On the subject of football, there are many similarities between organisations such as Lancashire Care and Football Clubs. Success does not rest on one individual and it doesn’t happen overnight. It is only due to a culmination of hard work and coming together as a team that you can achieve success. Success also requires focus, a clear goal as well as some standout performances. Behind every great Chief Executive or star striker there are a really talented group of staff, from volunteers and kit staff, fantastic clinicians and of course, a good goalkeeper! It is only through the combined effort of all these individuals that you can reach your goal. Since commencing my role at Lancashire Care, my main focus has been on getting the fundamentals right. The main aim of any health organisation is making sure it provides good quality care. As well as ensuring our targets are met and that people receive the best treatment, good quality care could also relate to things such as the appearance of staff and ensuring that behaviour and manners are how we want them to be and how they should be. By focusing on good quality care it is important that the patient is the forefront of everything we do. If we take the patient out of the picture and focus on what works better for organisations, this can often have unintended consequences for patients. As a Trust we want to avoid these unintended consequences so by putting ourselves in the position of patients we can ensure that patient experience and quality of care are high. My other focus is around improving adult mental health services across the county. We provide a whole spectrum of mental health services from community based teams where the majority of our service users are cared for right through to our inpatient units where we care for the small number of people who require an inpatient stay. The fundamental aim of this work is to make sure that service users receive the right treatment, in the right place, at the right time. As many of you will be aware the Trust is in the process of improving the environment for our inpatient services and have recently opened a new 18 bed unit in North Lancashire. Work is also moving at a fast pace at The Harbour, the Trust’s flagship inpatient unit on the Fylde Coast. This is a really ambitious and exciting time for Lancashire Care and I’m thrilled that I have been able to be involved in this project. Our new inpatient services are a great example of living our Trust values of Teamwork, Compassion, Integrity, Respect, Excellence and Accountability. These values underpin what we do as an organisation and I’m pleased that our staff have really got on board with what it is we are trying to achieve. From picking paint and furniture, designing the layout of the ward to looking at our patient pathways, service users and clinicians have been involved with every step. The NHS, like many other organisations is experiencing a challenging economic climate and still needs to achieve its targets whilst reducing the amount of money it spends. I am really keen that as an organisation we focus on what we have done well in the past as well as looking to the future to identify ways that we can work smarter. This might be things like supporting our District Nurses to use mobile tablets to update records on the go rather than needing to return to the office after every appointment, or looking at the shift pattern in our inpatient services to ensure effective handovers and that staff aren’t working long hours. This allows us to have the best of both worlds; we want to embrace technology to be better but retain traditional values and practice such as uniforms for nursing staff and ensuring that our clinicians are visible on wards as much as possible. Having started this blog talking about my other passion as well as working in healthcare, Burnley FC, I thought it only right that I conclude with a football analogy. Like most football teams, Lancashire Care wants to reach the premier league (of health services). Getting there is only the first hurdle though. Once you reach that top level the work doesn’t stop there. It is only by continuing to work as a team and maintaining the belief that got you there that you can sustain that position and high standards. I say to my colleagues what I imagine Sean Dyche said to his players once they reached their goal, the job is never done. Posted by Lancashire Care at Wednesday, October 29, 2014 No comments: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest Labels: Accountability, Chief Operating Officer, Community Health, Compassion, Excellence, Fylde Coast, Integrity, Lancashire Care, Mental Health, NHS, North Lancashire, Respect, Sue Moore, Teamwork, The Harbour WEDNESDAY, 22 OCTOBER 2014 A Message from Jon Tomlinson Hi everyone Welcome to the first edition of our blog. In this space, you will hear from different members of the executive team and find out about what’s on our agenda at the moment, what we have been up to, what keeps us awake at night and other interesting insights about our life at the Trust. And some of you might be surprised to know that we do find time for life outside of the role too, at least occasionally. I’ll tell you more about how I spend my spare time charging around rugby pitches in Yorkshire later on. I’m Jon Tomlinson and I’ve been in post as interim Chief Operating Officer for the last 5 months now. I came to the Trust in September when my predecessor Mark Hindle moved to Calderstones as Chief Executive and quickly got stuck into overseeing some really big and challenging agendas, supporting our network and clinical directors with the day to day operational delivery of services and also planning for the future. We have got a massive piece of work going on to transform how we deliver mental health services in the future. This means re-designing community services, delivering shorter waiting times to access them, ensuring that people don’t stay in hospital for longer than they need to and making sure that they are involved in their own care. Parallels exist in the way that we are designing services for people with long term conditions too. Increasingly we will be providing care at home across our provision of services, in a responsive and timely way. For some services this will mean operating 7 days a week and we are starting to think about what that means for the Trust and setting the wheels in motion. I’m a stickler for efficiency and productivity and these have been one of the main focuses for me during my time at Lancashire Care. Reflecting on the last 5 months we have made good progress in relation to improving performance outcomes, identifying priority areas and making sure that our resources are aligned to deliver on what we need to do. So back to the rugby. What has that got to do with being a Chief Operating Officer? Well, as a rugby union referee my role is to enable a game that is safe, fun and that is a fair contest where the laws of the game are respected. Off the pitch, it is all about taking decisions, being accountable, empowering others to do the same and hopefully not giving out too many yellow cards along the way!! That said, 10 minutes out in the sin bin often sees a return to the game with a fresh perspective and a different approach which isn’t always a bad thing. It’s amazing how you can look at something differently once you have taken some time out from it. I will leave you with that thought but not before saying thank you to the people of Lancashire for continuing to make this Yorkshire man feel so welcome. I have worked in many corners of the world and always enjoy being in Lancashire. As such I’m glad to be staying in the area for my next project which is taking me to the Local Area Team where I will be helping them devise a health and social care strategy. I will be working with Chief Executives of CCGs, providers and local authorities. A number of workstreams have been agreed in relation to the money side of things, models of care and addressing how the health and social care system in Lancashire can be better delivered. Sue Moore will be arriving from Birmingham shortly and picking up the reins (but not the yellow cards) from me as Chief Operating Officer. She will have a 3 week induction during which I will hand over to her before she officially takes over the reins on Monday 3 March. I wish Sue all the best in picking up what is an extremely challenging but very rewarding role. It has been great to spend time in an organisation and work with colleagues that really care about local people and that are driven to improve their health and well-being. Posted by Lancashire Care at Wednesday, October 22, 2014 No comments: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest Home Subscribe to: Posts (Atom) ABOUT ME Lancashire Care View my complete profile BLOG ARCHIVE ▼ 2014 (2) ▼ October (2) Welcome from the Chief Operating Officer A Message from Jon Tomlinson SHARE IT Picture Window template. Powered by Blogger.