Agenda item

Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust - Draft Strategy "Our Strategy - Working Together to Deliver Outstanding Care for Our Community"

Andrew Statham, Director of Strategy, Improvement and Partnerships, Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust, and Matthew Hayward, Deputy Director, Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust, will attend the meeting to present the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust Draft Strategy.

Minutes:

Matthew Hayward, Head of Strategy and Planning at the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust, submitted a report presenting the draft text of a revised strategy for the Trust, for comment and feedback ahead of final professional design and publication.  The draft strategy “Our Strategy – Working together to deliver outstanding care for our community” was attached at Appendix 1. 

The report explained that in 2021 and 2022 the Trust had recognised the need to review and update its strategy and supporting strategies, originally set in 2018, in order to ensure that they remained stretching, achievable and relevant to the context, challenges and opportunities of the organisation, patients and staff.  It stated that the purpose of the review was to:

·            Reflect changing conditions at the local, regional and national level

·            Adapt language to capture insight from engagement with staff and stakeholders, ensuring the strategy continues to resonate with the community

·            Set the direction of travel towards the new hospital encompassing how the Trust worked and what services it provided, as well as the physical infrastructure

·            Increase the focus and clarity on the actions the Trust would take to achieve its objectives and how it would monitor progress

·            Simplify the message and enhance the look and feel to aid communication and understanding and to keep the Trust ahead of the pack

·            Acknowledge and celebrate successes to date and where it wanted to move on or course-correct

The report listed the six inputs used in developing the refreshed strategy and highlighted some key points, including:

·       The Trust had decided to drop the Vision 2025 title to the strategy, instead giving emphasis to its vision statement “working together to deliver outstanding care for our community” as this provided greater clarity on how it wanted people to respond to the strategy.

·       The Trust had not changed its vision statement or its CARE (Compassionate, Aspirational, Resourceful, Excellent) values as these resonated with staff and stakeholders

·       A strong link had been set out from the strategy to the Trust’s continuous quality improvement journey

·       The Trust expected to be able to set clear measures for each of the three goals across the five strategic objectives, which were currently being developed and agreed internally

·       The strategy document would include an opening letter from the Chairman and CEO which would be drafted following a discussion to capture their views and would reflect feedback received during public engagement

 

The report stated that, as with the previous Vision 2025 Strategy, the Trust would be updating its supporting strategies (people, finance, Research & Development, estates, quality and improvement) throughout 2022/23 to set out in more detail how it would deliver on the main strategy.

The draft Strategy set out the following five strategic objectives, with three key aims within each objective:

1.    Provide the highest quality care for all

·       enhance the patientexperience

·       achieve optimaloutcomes

·       minimiseharm

2.    Invest in our people and live out our values

·       Recruit, retain and develop our people to their highest potential

·       Foster an inclusive and supportive culture that connects all staff with our purpose and empowers them to live out our values every day

·       Prepare our workforce for tomorrow

3.    Deliver in partnership

·       Promote wellbeing and prevention

·       Drive the development of integrated pathways of care

·       Improve access to care for all patients

4.    Cultivate innovation and improvement

·       Improve care through insights that inform clinical and operational decision-making

·       Unlock new and better ways for our staff to deliver care and for our patients to co-manage their health

·       Transform the user experience of digitally-enabled care for both patients and staff

5.    Achieve long-term sustainability

·       Live within our means

·       Minimise our impact on the environment

·       Upgrade our infrastructure in line with our ambitions

 

Matthew Hayward gave a presentation on the Strategy’s objectives and aims and answered questions from members of the Committee. In the following discussion, points made included:

 

·       The Trust was working closely with local authorities on health and social care issues, including on how to decrease health inequalities.  The Trust was using social and demographic data to predict and prevent people not attending appointments, health inequalities was one of the focuses for collaborative projects between the Trust and the University of Reading, supported by funding from the Innovation Fund, and there was a three year partnership with Public Health to identify and prevent inequalities.  A new Clinical Services strategy had been launched which also looked at how to approach care at home, and the hospital redevelopment was an opportunity to look at how to bring care closer to people’s homes in a number of ways.

·       In the purpose of the review one objective was listed as to “Simplify the message and enhance the look and feel to aid communication and understanding and to keep us ahead of thepack” and concern was expressed that keeping ahead of the pack implied competition with partners rather than working together.  It was reported that Clinical Directors from primary care partners had also been concerned at explanatory wording in objective two “We will recruit, support, motivate and develop our people to become the best and most inclusive place to work in the NHS” and so the wording of these sections of the strategy would be reviewed.

·       It was noted that, whilst a lot in the strategy aligned with the Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy (JHWBS), there was no reference to the JHWBS in the Trust’s strategy and Matthew Hayward agreed that the JHWBS needed more explicit reference in the Trust’s strategy.

·       There was an inherent tension when trying to improve public access for outpatient services if the hospital redevelopment meant moving from the current site that, just because services might be provided nearer to people’s homes, this did not necessarily improve access for all because, apart from in Reading, there were poor public transport links in most of Berkshire.  This was understood by the Trust, and work was being done on establishing better models to identify the best locations for patients for all of their health pathways, both for clinical outcomes and for access purposes and to then define the most appropriate access targets.

·       It was noted that the potential decentralising of outpatient services off the hospital site could be a problem for patients, particularly in areas of deprivation which already had high health inequalities, such as Whitley Ward.  If services came to GP surgeries, there could be problems accessing GP appointments and if patients had to travel to other areas, this could be a challenge for them and would not help with achieving the Trust’s zero carbon target.  It was reported that data was being collected to help the Trust focus on health inequalities and it was suggested that it would be useful to have a further discussion around this topic at a future meeting.

Resolved –

(1)      That Matthew Hayward be thanked for his presentation;

(2)      That the draft strategy be noted and the comments made be fed back to the Trust by Matthew Hayward.

Supporting documents: