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It has been an enriching experience to travel and work in
UK, and learn first hand of the working of the National
Health Services. The system of health-care delivery is based
on the concept of social insurance and is free at the point
of delivery.
As I was taken
on a one-day trip as part of my ‘induction’ to the various
departments of the hospital, I began to appreciate the
minuteness of the magnanimity. All the departments that I
had only read about during my hospital management campus
days, were seeing the light of day. It was a lot to take in
on one day and I returned feeling a bit overwhelmed. What
followed thenceforth, has rooted strong professional and
personal ties with the hospital and the colleagues whom I
worked with.
My
ex-workplace-mid capital Staffordshire General Hospitals NHS
Trust is part of the NHS – National Health Service of which
there are over 600 trusts in UK. It opened, not so long ago
in 1983, serving the people of Mid & South Staffordshire, a
population of about 3,20,000. There are 2 hospitals within
the Trust-Staffordshire General Hospital, in Stafford and
Cannok chase hospital in Cannok, SGH provides accident and
emergency and general facilities including on outpatients
department, holding major clinic in major specialties
pathology and rehabilitation and a medical assessment unit,
and rehabilitation and a medical assessment unit and has
approximately 410 beds. An added feature in the hospital is
a very well equipped post graduate medical centre. It is a 3
storey harness design hospital.
Cannock Chase
Hospital in Cannock deals with both in-patient and day case
work, and has 166 beds. It was opened in 1991. A Corner
stone of this unique hospital is its Rheumatology unit, a
sub-regional specialty. Both hospitals are set in 3.48
hectare area each, and employ over 2,500 people. The trust
principally covers a geographical catchment area of 325
square miles.
It is my
pleasure to discuss the clinical and management features
along with sharing my view and experiences, regarding this
hospital.
To suffice in
this issue, I would like to give on overview of the Trust
Strategy in delivering services based on the Trust-wide five
key commitments to the peoples of Staffordshire and
surrounding areas. The five commitment are locally known as
the five Cs” and entail the following :
Clinical
Responsiveness improvement – To develop and implement systemis and practices, which improving clinical
effectiveness. The clinical response addresses issues in
order to improve the consistency of care across the spectrum
from self care to general Practitioner, hospital and
intermediate care and discharge back in to the patient’s
home. It also covers improving access to care, reducing
waiting time and changing the way care is delivered.
Continuous
improvement of working lives - To ensure the workforce
has the capacity, skills diversity and flexibility to enable
the Directorates (Organisational structures) to meet service
commitment and to foster a culture of lifelong learning and
development. The trust approaches this in a number of ways,
from the delivery of new inhouse training programmes,
externally. This also includes issues of employment practice, eg. Flexible working, job sharing etc. and
environmental issues, for example crèche. Facilities and
health and safety.
Controlling the
financial Agenda- to develop and implement systems to enable
the Directorates to achieve there income and expenditure
objectives.
Clinical
Governance - To create an environment that fosters
excellence in clinical care by practicing clinical audit and
enabling the directorates to continuously improve the
quality of services provided. One of the ways to measure
success is by accreditation and the trust is working towards
a numbers of externally awarded accreditation standards
including ‘investors in people’ and clinical negligence
scheme for trust. A standard that examines clinical safety
management of risks, legal and complaints handling,
including clinical performance etc.
Computing
information Technology – to ensure more effective
utilization of information technology system to enhance the
services provided by the Trust. Recent years have seen
investment uptil $2.5 million, into new state of the art
network servers and further roll out of computers. This is a
part of a strategy to deliver electronic patient records and
to maximize efficiency in patient care.
This is the
under lying framework for directing the Trust towards
organizational success.
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