It is tremendous to see the efforts that our NHS staff are continuing to demonstrate to ensure each and every patient is given the best possible care, 24/7, and that they are receiving the gratitude from almost everyone in the country. 

We showed our thanks (link here) last week and our ongoing thoughts are with our colleagues on the frontline.  Following a number of conversations with Execs around the country, there is some time being spent looking to the future.

How do we channel the positivity, productivity and direction we see at the moment to ensure that we do not “go back to how things were” but continue to benefit from this situation to help drive a new culture in our health service? 

We have a tremendous opportunity to shape the new world we will all find ourselves in, and failing to do so could lead to the very same problems we were forced to deal with before Covid-19 began to wreak havoc on services; from increasing waiting lists, to high lengths of stay, to crippling bank and agency costs, to expensive waiting list initiatives, to misalignments of capacity and demand within community services.

Practically, this means equipping teams with the right training and tools required to ensure workload is fairly distributed, whilst working towards transparent goals and targets and eliminating variation in clinical practice.

Now is the time to press the reset button and embed a new culture underpinned by the right controls, behaviours and actions designed to give those clinical leads at the front line a tighter grip on the resources they have at their disposal. For example, whilst we have taken the correct action in stopping elective activity, we need to plan for when the curve begins to flatten.

And we can do it. Who’d have thought we could set-up a hospital in a week…

Such achievements should not go un-noticed. We have the drive, ambition, skills, and know-how to deliver positive change at the front line, that ultimately ensures patients are being provided the best possible care.

This means using the opportunity we have right now to start forecasting demand and aligning this with capacity, predicting patient flows and taking the required actions now to ensure we are ahead of the curve.

Gareth Jenkins, Chief Executive Officer, Meridian Productivity