NHS GRAMPIAN
Minute of the Grampian Area Partnership Forum (GAPF)
held on Wednesday 10 October2012 at 2.00pm
in Meeting Room, ChalmersHospital, Banff
Present:
Sharon Duncan, Employee Director (Chairperson)
Mike Adams, UCATT
Joan Anderson, Partnership Support Officer
Gemma Barclay, SOR
Jim Clark, GMB
Bill Cowling, Project Manager Mental Health (VC)
Frances Dunne, Service Nurse Manager
Ian Francis, CSP
Alistair Grant, RCN
Alan Gray, Director of Finance
Laura Gray, Director of Corporate Communications (VC)
Mary Hutchison, GMB
Annie Ingram, Director of Workforce
Steven Lindsay, UNITE (VC)
Bettina Low, Unison
Deirdre McIntyre, SOCAP
Martin Mackay, UNISON (VC)
Sandra-Dee Masson, BAOT
Mike Ogg, Assistant General Manager Aberdeenshire
Stewart Rogerson, Head of Soft Facilities Management, Decontamination Lead and Nominated Officer Fire for NHS Grampian
Clare Ruxton, Deputy Director of Workforce
Elizabeth Squires, Area manager for Marr
Vincent Shields, General Manager Acute
Hazel Whyte
In Attendance:
Linda McKerron, Learning and Development Manager – Item 5
Les Walker, Head of Fire & Security Services – Item 6a
Diane Annand, HR Team Leader and Lorraine Hunter, Deputy Head of Service HRSC – Item 7c
Item / Subject / Action1 / Apologies
Apologies were received from Gary Mortimer, General Manager Facilities and Estates (Stewart Rogerson deputised), Philip Shipman, HR Manager Moray (no deputy),Kirsten Sawers, RCM(no deputy available),Leanne Gardner (no deputy), Eileen Grant, AHP (no deputy available), Duncan Stephen, ACB (no deputy), Mike Scott, Staff Governance Committee (no deputy), Keith Thomson, Head of Health and Safety (no deputy), Jenny Greener, Non-Executive Director (no deputy) , Anne Ross, Head of Performance & Quality Improvement (no deputy), Pauline Strachan, Chief Operating Officer (no deputy), Richard Carey, Chief Executive (no deputy), Alison Hardy, Clinical Nurse Manager (Hazel Whyte deputised), Elinor Smith, Director of Nursing (no deputy),
2 / Minute of Last Meeting held on 20 September2012
The minute of the last meeting held on 20 September2012 was approved. It was agreed to circulate the minutes with the agenda for future meetings.
3 / Matters Arising
Dress Code Policy
It has been hoped to have the Dress Code Policy to GAPF for approval but it was still to be discussed at the Medical and Dental LNC therefore it would come to November meeting instead. / SD
4 / Feedback from Aberdeenshire Away Day
The morning event had gone very well. It was an informal sharing of partnership information and gaining experience from GAPF Reps on the right time, the right way of developing partnership structures. The learning points from the workshops were very useful.
Thanks was given to Aberdeenshire for holding the first of the Sector events and GAPF looked forward to returning in a year to see the success over the next year.
5 / AT Learning
Linda McKerron attended the meeting to explain what the AT Learning package could do.
NHS Grampian purchased the package in 2008 as a consequence of Hospital Acquired Infection (HAI) and Health and Safety Executive (HSE) recommendation to have one way to access all training records for staff.
Around 70% of training information was now available on AT Learning and there was still more being added. Staff are now used to finding eLearning online accessible anytime, anywhere.
Some other Boards also have the AT Learning package.
Reports can be run easily from the package on Health and Safety, HAI, Health Environment Inspectorate (HEI) training. Staff Side could also run reports as Joan Anderson had been trained.
GPs had access to training on the system and GP Staff and Dentists were asking for access. The Scottish Ambulance Service, Grampian Police, CareHomesetc all had access to the system.
The eLearning Management System was gearing up to being transferred into the electronic staffing system being developed for Boards.
There was an automatic link from AT Learning to eKSF and Personal Development Plans. When the transfer was ready to take place with the electronic staffing system staff were recommended to keep back up copies of their eKSF.
NHS Grampian had made it clear to NHS Scotland that if there were changes being discussed they wanted to keep the same as what they had or better.
Some staff found that some of the links didn’t work when doing elearning outside NHS Grampian premises. The reason for this was not the links but the firewalls on personal computers. If links didn’t work then staff would have to contact their service provider to ask for the links to be allowed through the fire wall.
There was discussion regarding staff undertaking training at home. Staff should not be asked to undertake training in their own time, but staff may choose to do some in their own time or in NHS Grampians time but away from their own workplace in agreement with their manager.
Access to computers was discussed. In Facilities they offered groups of staff to sit round a screen to do online training together and they would be given a paper copy of the quiz at the end to complete. There were a number of ways to get round the access to computers that managers could use.
eLearning was welcomed by managers with staff on 12 hour shifts as it was more difficult to release staff for classroom training.
If anyone wished to see the package in detail there was managers access to the system which could be given to look at their own staff by contacting Linda McKerron. This access would be rolled out with the necessary training.
6 / Delivering Safe, Effective & Timely Care in the Right Place
a.Fire Safety Update
Les Walker attended the meeting to update on Fire Safety. The organisation was far behind on where it needed to be with fire safety but was making progress. It would take 2-3 years to have all the fire and rescue services in place. All high risk areas were being worked on and almost all would be complete this year. Fire risk assessments had highlighted issues on almost every site.
Grampian Fire and Rescue Services were auditing NHS Grampian. They were aware that NHS Grampian were aware of the work that was required to bring the buildings up to agreed levels.
Safe evacuation systems were to be put into place for all hospitals. Fire policy, fire safety management, fire safety strategy and fire risk assessment strategy were all needed to be in place.
50% of backlog maintenance money was being spent on fire safety in the current year and 100% of backlog maintenance money was to be spent in the next year.
Two additional trainers were being recruited to review fire evacuation plans.
NHS Grampian met with Grampian Fire and Rescue Services every two months to go over issues.
b.Health and Safety in NHS Grampian
There was no health and safety update.
c.Datix
Sharon Duncan had presented to the Board that at the Patient Safety Walkabouts the Senior Executives would remind staff to complete datix reports, when required, for any safety issues. All were asked to encourage staff to use datix reporting systems.
d.Change Fund Progress
The change fund work was predominantly care of the elderly to either keep people at home or in the local area to provide local services and a fast turn around when secondary care had to be used.
The Change Fund was being scrutinised by Scottish Government by a joint improvement team. The most recent report showed that money was not being spent as quickly as the Scottish Government had expected. Aberdeenshire had met to discuss and agreed they didn’t want to spend money just to spend it.
The Older Peoples Strategic Outcome Group was set up for bids to fund projects. The most relevant decision made at the last meeting was to fund £1m for Plain X-Ray to be provided for Inverurie and AboyneHospitals. This would provide accessibility for services locally and take some workload and capacity issues from the Acute Sector.
There was a query about building expectations or risks to staff that services funded by the Change Fund would be expected to continue when the funding was no longer available?
There was a challenge around people concerned to commit because of the risks. Each project was being evaluated by RobertGordonsUniversity to ensure there were not risks. The challenge was to spend rather than not spend and the other challenge was around recruitment of staff for projects when moving to integration.
e.2 Accelerated Projects
Elizabeth Squires, Area manager for Marr, reported that they had identified planned care as accelerated projects. This was split intoseven workstreams. The referral between consultant and GP was being looked at to iron out any issues and was a positive move to have these two groups of people working together.
Pre-operative assessment – identified two in JubileeHospital and 2 in AboyneHospital to train in pre-op, premises were identified and they were waiting to see how the figures were going. There was GP input into this.
There was a meeting to take place regarding Haematology and next level Chemotherapy in Hospitals. Also a meeting was being held to discuss releasing time at Theatres by collating 5 clinics into one. The funding for this would be £2k which is a mixture of endowments, acute and community hospital and Friends Group.
The X-Ray would be using former maternity premises at AboyneHospital and there was still to be planning and costings for this.
Dexa scanning was going into AboyneHospital so there would be direct access to radiology for GPs.
There was an Action Learning Set attached to each CommunityHospital in Aberdeenshire and this would iron out any issues that arose. They had a very good facilitator and 67 action outcomes had been achieved since starting. It was a multi-disciplinary approach and had been a great success.
The plan for wet adm injections for macular degeneration would be done by existing members of staff and resource was needed to enhance the team to support the existing team.
Some of the actions were live and a timeline would be drawn up and put into an action development plan.
It was noted that by 2020 there would be a need to have reduced out patients appointments by 140,000 either by redesigning them out or shifting the geography of care. There was a need to have solutions either small or those which could be scaled up to the whole of the organisation and evaluation of the processes and a back up plan.
Two areas were chosen in line with the 2020 vision and the agenda for planned and unscheduled care. Marr was taking forward the project for planned care and Buchan for unscheduled care.
f.Pathfinder Inverurie
Two groups were taking forward scoping of the work required which would be complete by January. This is around what would be required in Inverurie to make ready for 2020. Although the pathfinder was about health care and Gmed Services it was now including hospital sites and the dependency on services.
The project could include the relocation of the health centre, new emerging community maternity hospital, plain X-Ray, dementia work, care home (build off site) to create a footprint to develop and add out-patients services, etc.
g.National Distribution Centre
It was agreed to add this item to the agenda as it had arisen just before the meeting.
Stewart Rogerson had attended a joint public sector local group regarding the National Distribution Centre (NDC). There had been discussion about the possibility of NDC taking over some delivery work that NHS Grampian transport services currently undertakes. NDC is a public service organisation but they contract out some of their services and this proposal may mean that some of NHS Grampians transport services would then be undertaken by an private company.
It was noted that past experience had shown that contracting out domestic services had had an impact on terms and conditions of staff and the Hospital Acquired Infection situation and then cost more to take them back inhouse again.
Stewart Rogerson asked GAPF for a view on how far he should continue to be part of discussions which involved outside contractors before he had to say he would not be involved.
The Executive Team needed to discussed this and then the GAPF should take a decision on the principle around contracting out services and there was a need for more information on this before making that decision. A small group would be set up to discuss this and agree some broad principles. Stewart Rogerson would write an SBAR Report for the Executive Team to assist discussions.
Stewart Rogerson agreed to find out if there was staff side discussion ongoing nationally on this issue. / ALL
AI/SR
SR
7
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* / Improving Efficiency, Productivity and Sustainability
- NHS Financial Report Update
The next four years would be reported on more comprehensively at the next GAPF meeting.
There would be £30m of new money but with cost pressures etc the cost would be £45m including £10m NRAC uplift.
- Partnership Reports from Sectors
The Emergency Care Centre was moving forward and plans were progressing well. There was no huge turbulence as Partnership Reps were engaged.
The final few weeks before the move would be hectic but the moves would be managed well.
Training and recruitment would have to be looked at very carefully. The Workforce Team were working closely with staff to try and ensure all issues were covered.
Partnership Groups had been set up in the MaternityHospital, Childrens Services and Dr Grays. Staff in the Community hadn’t been involved in the Childrens Services Partnership Group and this would have to be remedied.
Facilities
The Sector was £315k overspent for period 5. The areas of biggest concern were domestic salaries incremental drift and staff who had moved from bands one to two. The drivers team had reduced from 20 to 5 so agency staff were having to be used. Income was down from catering services because of reduced use. Work on methods of recovery was underway in monthly Partnership meetings.
AberdeenCity
There were two projects ongoing, one was the move to the Emergency Care Centre involving three wards at Woodend. This was being done in Partnership across sites. There had been briefings for staff who were moving and for staff who were not moving.
The other project was the move to the HealthVillage and there was a need to involve Staff Side from a variety of sites for this.
Work was continuing with Staff Side regarding Health and Social Care Integration with Local Authority.
The Sector Partnership Forum had two Partnership Groups, one from Woodend and one for AberdeenCity.
They were beginning to plan the Aberdeen City GAPF Away Day.
93% of allocated financial targets were being achieved.
Full-Time Partnership Representatives
Annie Ingram reported that the funding for the Full-Time Partnership Representatives was due to end in December 2012. These Reps were worth their weight in gold and agreement needed to be reached to continue their funding. It had been hoped to have the outcome of a PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit on the work of these Reps by now so there was a need to draw together a business case soon.
Sharon Duncan stated that the status quo would remain until there was a decision to the contrary as there was plenty of work for the Reps to keep doing.
Staff Side would be ensuring that the process for nominating the Full-Time Partnership Reps was agreed and any elections necessary would take place soon so that they were ready for the business case and to continue into the future when agreement was reached. The Reps were on Facilities Release from their substantive posts and this would be the proposal for the future.
- New On-Call Arrangement
They explained the background to the paper and that this proposal would super cede everything that had gone before. It had been hoped that the circular would have been received prior to the meeting but it had not arrived.
It was agreed to remove the point in the paper that might impact on a national issue.
There were queries on some of the points and it was agreed to wait until the circular was received and reconvene the Terms and Conditions Sub-Group to discuss some of the points again. Comments on the paper were to be sent to Diane or Lorrainewithin two weeks of the the circular being received (copy attached), and an updated paper along with the Questions and Answers papers to come to the next meeting of GAPF.
- Recruitment and Retention Premia (RRP)
Annie Ingram had stated nationally that this payment needs to stay in place for the longer term and if there was a move to remove NHS Grampian would be back to request the payment is kept in place.
Payment would begin in October pay with backdated payments date to be agreed.
This was a good example of Partnership working and showed what could be achieved when working together. Thanks were given to all concerned.
Sharon Duncan agreed to write to Diane Annand to thank her and the team for the work and dedication to this project.
It was noted that the RRP was only for some trades staff and therefore some trades staff were not in receipt of RRP despite working alongside their colleagues who did receive it. Once recruitment began for the rest of the staff evidence would be gathered for another application for RRP.
Moray
The financial position in Moray requires some significant attention from all staff. We plan to build upon the financial recovery plan in partnership to ensure the successful delivery of the financial targets.
Work was ongoing to plan events for European Health and Safety Week.
Aberdeenshire
Mike Ogg reported the situation for Aberdeenshire. Each of the six areas of Aberdeenshire were setting up Partnership Forums.
The overall financial position in Aberdeenshire was good and efforts were being concentrated on the non-pay areas which are showing some considerable overspends which needed to be brought under control.
Mental Health
Bill Cowling reported an overall adverse variance at Month 5 of £362K, which was an improvement of £138K over the previous month, largely due to the allocation of Incremental Drift Funding. The Partnership Forum continued to meet bi monthly and were planning events for European Health and Safety Week (full report attached). / AG
VS/SDM
SD
8 / Developing the Workforce and Empowering Staff
- Salary Sacrifice – Home Computing Scheme
9 / Improving the Public Health and Reducing Inequalities
- Staff Experience
10 / Any Other Competent Business
British Medical Association (BMA) Ballot
It was reported that the BMA had balloted their members on potential action for December. The other organisations were asked if they were planning to ballot members as well. No plans had been discussed by the other organisations for balloting to date.
11 / Communication to Organisation from GAPF
It was agreed to communicate:
- Positive Partnership Day with Aberdeenshire and how Partnership was being taken forward in each of the six Areas. Aberdeenshire Co-Chairs would prepare an Up Front Article on the event.
- On Call arrangements once agreed
- RRP Agreement
- Home Computing Scheme and the further information to come out
12 / Date and Time of Next Meeting
The next meeting to be held 2pm to 5pm Thursday 15 November2012 in Meeting Room, Fulton Clinic, Royal Cornhill Hospital. This meeting will be preceeded by a GAPF Away Day hosted by Mental Health and Learning Disabilities from 10am to 1pm in Fulton Clinic Meeting Room, RoyalCornhillHospital. All invited to attend. / ALL
Joan Anderson