Welcome to the second edition of ' Turnaround Times', which aims to keep you updated specifically on issues related to the trust's developing plans for resolving our financial deficit position. If you have any suggestions, ideas, or questions, please contact Iain McInnes, Interim Chief Executive, by email or through Isy Galavan
Deadline getting closer...
We are on track for submitting the Turnaround Plan to the Yorkshire & Humber Strategic Health Authority for the end of September. This plan will give the Health Authority the assurance that they need to know we are serious about living within our means and that we are taking action both now and in the future to resolve our challenges.
The weekly Turnaround Team meetings have been strengthened with two new members joining us. Brenda Lloyd and Paul Newham are staff representatives on the group. Brenda works in both the Hospital Trust and the PCT so she will be able to make sure both organisations are pulling together, and Paul, as one of the engineers, works all over the hospital site, so he is well placed to hear what all of you are really thinking and what your concerns are. So I am delighted that Brenda & Paul have both joined the team.
Extra support from Yorkshire & Humber SHA...
The Yorkshire & Humber Strategic Health Authority are giving us some further support in that they will fund 90% of the historic debt in the current financial year. This amounts to £12.2m that will really help us this year.
The historical debt will still need to be generated but we can now negotiate the period of time over which we can fully tackle the historical debt.
This support has not been made available to all NHS organisations that are in Turnaround so Martin Robson, Finance Director and myself are particularly pleased for this extra support.
Staff feedback...
As I pointed out last week, we have already had some feedback on the proposals in the Price Waterhouse Cooper report, so thank you to those who have responded.
We have also had some new ideas put forward that we are currently considering. I am quickly taking action on two of those suggestions:
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Private Patient Beds - From 1st October 2006 the Private Patient Unit (PPU) will be "ring fenced", that is we will only use those beds for private patients.
As well as needing to save money we also need to make as much money as we can, and the PPU already provides a lot of extra income to the Trust. Currently, because we sometimes use those beds, especially for medical patients, some private work gets cancelled so we lose income.
I realise this will mean bed management may be tighter on some occasions, but in reality we are only talking about a very small number of beds and the potential income far outweighs this pressure.
Waiting List Initiative - From the middle of October all Waiting list Initiative work will cease except for orthopaedic work.
We can meet the necessary waiting times, and the volume of work we need to do to meet contracts, in all surgical specialities with the exception of orthopaedics.
The waiting list work in orthopaedics is also fully funded by the PCT through our base contract; in order to do all the procedures we need to do we will have to continue waiting list initiative work for the rest of this year. I will be working with clinical staff and managers to plan next year's workload so that we can fully stop waiting list work.
Our future...
In developing turnaround plans with you we need to make sure that what we do now does not have a bad effect on our future. With this in mind the Board will be working to pull together a new strategy for the next three to five years. We plan to have a first draft ready to discuss and consult with staff and others at the end of October. Some of the ideas put forward for Turnaround will also be in this draft strategy.
Look out for more news in the next edition of Turnaround Times.
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