Weeknotes s03e11

Andy Callow
Web of Weeknotes
Published in
5 min readMar 26, 2021

--

TL;DR: Group Digital Strategy approved at NGH Board. Showcasing li’l ‘ol Kettering in a Making Data Count Workshop. Meeting Matthew Gould.

[week ending 26/03/2021]

Who did you talk to outside of your organisation? A few of us met Matthew Gould, CEO of NHSX this week. He joined with Sonia Patel, the NHSX CIO. We pulled out the big guns and had Simon, our Group CEO, The Trusts’ Chair and Alice the NED who chairs the Group Digital Hospital Committee. We talked about what we’d done so far as a hospital group, particuarly highlighting the value the KGH board put on Digital in 2019 by appointing a board-level CDIO and establishing an EPR programme without seeking external funding. We then talked about the future as a group, about the inclusion of NGH in the Digital Aspirant seed funding and the business case we’re putting together, as well as our ambition to use data to drive decisions in our ICS, along with my pet project about bed management. It was a great meeting, a great moment to share what we’ve achieved and talk about our future with confidence based on our delivery record.

Summary of the KGH EPR programme shared with Matthew Gould

I joined a few colleagues on a stakeholder panel for the NGH CEO interviews.

I also joined a few colleagues from the Midlands, talking about the role of digital in the emerging ICSs.

What would you have liked to do more of? I wrote last week about the business case needing to be pulled from the Trust board agenda due to the affordability not quite being nailed. I had quite a few conversations with people this week about it, but still haven’t closed this off. Hoping to get closer to this next week.

What did you learn? I joined the KGH BAME Network meeting this week. We talked about potentially renaming of the group and aligning with the naming at NGH. I got to talk briefly about the value I’m getting from the reverse mentoring sessions.

Last weekend I blogged How not to suck at NHS Job applications, and shared it on LinkedIn and Twitter. I made some comments about people not being open about their current salary and got some feedback from some lovely people, including from ShowTheSalary who kindly pointed out some of the experiences associated with unconcious bias related to salary declarations:

In the US, when asking current/previous salaries was banned, pay increased for Black candidates by 13% and for women by 8%. Therefore lots of people don’t want to share this info, nor should they be made to, and if it doesn’t influence the pay offer then why ask it?

So, having read some more around this I added a postscript to the blog.Whilst I felt a bit annoyed with myself for not taking that into account in the first place, it did at least exemplify the principle of Make Things Open. It Makes Things Better.

What did you enjoy? It was the NGH Trust Board this week. We talked about the NGH Staff Survey, the Group People Plan, plans for recovering the Elective survery position and I asked the board for approval of the Group Digital Strategy. I do the same thing at Kettering at the Board next week, then we’re all systems go with the Group Digital Strategy!

We had two digital operational meetings this week — KDOM and NDOM. Really good to see how these meetings are iterating and improving the value that they add as we go on since starting in January this year.

Several of us joined Sam Riley from NHSI/E to talk about the progress KGH made from using RAG rated reports at the Board to using SPC Charts. Brilliantly coordinated by Sam and Richard and superb input from Jo, Leanne, Trevor (deputy Trust Chair), Bhav, Andrew and Kenny. I left the workshop feeling protective about Kenny and people wanting to steal him and his excellent team!

Source: https://twitter.com/samriley/status/1374783309004292097

What did you achieve? I finally clicked send on my application to become an Advanced Practitioner in the Federation of Informatics Professionals, FEDIP. As much as I really don’t like that word “Informatics”, this is part of my intention achieve Certified Healthcare CIO status this year and being part of FEDIP is an essential step. Mike wrote a good blog about this this week why certification is important in the digital health space.

Confirmation of my application to FEDIP Advanced Practitioner

Working with the rest of the shortlisting panel, we finally finished shortlisting for the NGH Digital Director post. This has taken a lot of my time over the past two weeks, so delighted to get it off the kanban board.

I did the prep work for an objective-setting session with Simon, my line manager. Given that I’ll be monitored on the delivery of the Group Digital Strategy, I’ve basically included every target!

I chaired a session about our Group-wide approach to Transformation. We have different approaches in each Trust currently, so we’ve launched a few workshops to discuss the scope and ambition of Transformation, deliberately avoiding talking about organisaitonal structures until that’s over.

What are you looking forward to next week?

  • Not so much looking forward, but a bit of anxiety as I shadow Karen as I learn about doing Director On Call at NGH.
  • KGH Board — key item for me is to obtain approval for the Group Digital Strategy.
  • Meeting to set my objectives for 2021/22 with Simon.

Interesting Stuff read/consumed:

  • Weeknotes, Week1 by Ella Fitzsimmons. Emma talking about starting a new job. “One of the things I’ve seen my male colleagues/network do is take time to think when they’ve started new jobs, rather than try to help and fix things. This has led to them being able to establish themselves as “strategic” while I zap around like a blue-arsed fly. So in this job, I’m looking after my time more aggressively.”
  • Industry reaction to Matt Hancock’s “a consistent data platform” announcement at Digital Health Rewired 2021 at Silver-Buck. “The resistance to this model from the current market-leading suppliers shuold nto be underestimated”.

Books finished this week:

Currently Reading:

  • Non-Fiction: Parliament: The Biography, Vol. 1 — Ancestral Voices. Don’t ask me anything about this because I’ve retained nothing in the first 100 pages.
  • Fiction: Charlotte Grey by Sebastian Fawkes. This is the first Fawkes book that hasn’t really grabbed me, it feels really slow. So at the minute I’ve got two books beside the bed that are hard going.

--

--

Husband. Dad to 3 smashing lads. Cub Leader. MAMIL. CDIO for Nottingham University Hospitals. Ex UHN and NHS Digital. Views own. Always learning.