Spying on NHS staff

St George's has just decided that one of the most pressing problems that it is facing is the issue of staff smoking on Hospital grounds. As a result, managers have decided to build a network of CCTV cameras to spy on staff who might be smoking in the grounds.

With a recent break in which saw 20,000 patient records stolen perhaps they should design a CCTV strategy against thieves not against staff...

Yet more financial mess at St George's brewing...

Last year St George’s finally seemed to have got its finances in order and made a £1 million profit. Good news given the need to service £36 million of debt. Unfortunately, the improvement required a four month staff vacancy freeze and the selling off staff accommodation for £6 million. Neither actions were sustainable.

In the first five months of this financial year, St George's has already run up a deficit of another £2 million. To break even this year it will have to slash costs to compensate with a profit of nearly £4 million in the back half of the year.

This debacle was caused management’s failure to agree a budget BEFORE the year started. Extraordinarily, they went into the year with a £6 million budget black hole. The taxpayer deserves better than an ‘it will be alright on the night’ approach to public money.

Staff and patients will now likely pay the price of this management budgeting failure as another round of cuts hits the Hospital.

Senior managers must help end this feast and famine in our local NHS by committing themselves to agreeing a budget at the start of the year.

The AGM would be a good time to make this commitment. I suspect that the addition of the experience of former Unilever Finance Director, Graham Hibbert, who has recently joined the Board could be decisive here.

Wandsworth PCT invite people to their AGM...

Below is the note that Wandsworth PCT are sending out to local people.

There are two things that St George's management could usefully learn from this:

1. Having a meeting that starts between 6.30pm and 7.00pm is a good idea and takes into account the needs of working people - especially those people like young professionals who often have busy lives in town. By contrast St George's Hospital's AGM starts at 5pm. Good for managers... less good for residents.

2. Advertising the meeting widely is a good idea to ensure that as many people. By contrast there has been virtually no advertising of the St George's AGM. Makes an easy life if you want to avoid questioning... less good for putting a spotlight on the local NHS.

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The PCT's invitation...

"Come along to Wandsworth Teaching PCT's Annual General Meeting which takes place on Wednesday 10 September 2008 from 6.30pm to 8pm at Samaj Hall just off Tooting High Street, behind NatWest bank.

A light buffet will be served at 6.30pm, followed by a 40 minute presentation and time for questions afterwards. Find out:

• Do you know what your local NHS organisation does?
• How do we spend tax payer’s money?
• What have been the highlights of our year?
• How can you help us make local NHS services better?

There is no need to book to attend the AGM – just come along, but it would be great if you let us know so we can make sure we have enough food! Call communications on 020 8812 7605 or reply to this email.

Get healthy while you wait...

During the day you can come along to Samaj Hall and have a free health check done at the Staying Healthy event. Find out how to improve your health and well being and reduce the chances of developing chronic diseases and ill health in the future.

Staying Healthy will run from 12pm to 4.30pm. Each health check will last about 15 to 30 minutes and gives you the chance to:

• Find out your body mass index and waist circumference
• Have your blood sugar and cholesterol tested
• Learn more about how you can improve your own health
• Develop your own personal health plan

We hope to see you there."

Full scale of nappy valley revealed

Estate agents often talk about parts of Wandsworth being nappy valley. But here now is revealed the proper extent births in Wandsworth in 2007 and its ward distribution. As you can see there is a quite extraordinary variation by ward with some wards having nearly three times as many births as in other wards. This is very important because:

1. St George's Hospital maternity unit has received a slating from the independent Healthcare Commission.
   
2. Wandsworth PCT are looking at how to configure maternity services properly across the Borough - put bluntly those services need to be focused on places where there are high concentrations of new mothers and not for any politically correct reasons.

Huge IT project @ St George's delayed indefinitely

ICLIP is an enormous IT project at St George's. It is supposed to cost between £10 million and £12 million over five years. I wish I could be so casual with a £2 million difference...

Despite having a tricky record when it comes to IT, St George's managers went ahead with it anyway. It pays out in around ten years. Even Stalin had five year plans...

Now it has been delayed... apparently there is no firm date for its deployment.

The Trust management appear in meltdown mode about it. The Communications department sent out a memo to all staff on the subject announcing a delay. Amusingly, the Chief Executive felt that he needed to send out another memo to all staff confirming that the Communications department were indeed telling the truth. Here is the memo:

"Dear Colleague

I am writing to confirm the content of the email sent by Jonathan Street last Friday which advised that the iCLIP Steering Committee has decided to reschedule the iCLIP deployment date. We are working with BT and the London Programme for IT to develop a new deployment plan and this is currently indicating a revised 'go live' date in the first quarter of 2009.

I’d like to thank the many staff in the Trust who have been involved with iCLIP and supported the programme over the past few months. It is important that we don’t lose focus at this stage but continue with all the work we need to do to achieve a successful deployment early next year.

For information, the full message from Jonathan is appended below.

David Astley
Chief Executive

Message dated 22 August 2008
The iCLIP Steering Committee has taken the decision to reschedule the iCLIP deployment date.
It is not unusual for delays to occur on programmes of this size and complexity. Lessons learned from other London implementations and slippages to our programme timetable have left us with insufficient time to test sufficiently the data migration and interface elements of the programme.
The iCLIP team is working with BT and the London Programme for IT to develop a new deployment plan and this is currently indicating a revised 'go live' date in the first quarter of 2009. Whilst it is disappointing that we have had to delay 'go live', it is important that all parts of the system are robustly tested and that we learn the lessons from other implementations.
In the meantime, the iCLIP team will keep you updated on progress and arrangements for training and registering for smartcards and notify you once we have finalised a revised go live date with the London Programme for IT."

With a project of this scale going wrong, the next Board meeting is going to be interesting.

There are two reasons why it could have gone wrong.

1. The project is off schedule.
2. The project is on schedule but the Trust's finances are so bad this year that they cannot afford to implement it.

We shall see...

Laptops theft @ St George's

Many of you will know that St George's suffered a very serious theft of 6 laptops and lost around 20,000 patients data. The full report into that theft has now been written and is currently sitting on the Chief Executive's desk. However, it is not going to be published for another month. We all have to wait until the next Board meeting on September 16th to hear what it says. In addition, the Board have not committed to publishing the report in full - despite the fact that when the Government lost all the Child Benefit records for the whole country they published the full report.

So here is what the report needs to answer:

1. Why are any parts being hidden?
2. Why was the data on the laptops?
3. What work was being done on the laptops?
4. What would have happened if the work had not been done?
5. Why was the data not encrypted?
6. Who authorised the work to be done on laptops?
7. Where the laptops locked up?
8. Do the police believe that the thieves were Hospital staff or not?
9. When was the Information Commissioner informed of the theft?
10. What advice did the Information Commissioner give and was this followed?
11. Has the Information Commissioner seen and approved the final report?
12. Why was an attempt made to blame IT as part of the initial media strategy?
13. Has the Head of IT signed off on the final report?
14. What changes has the Trust made to stop this ever happening again?

Important NHS meetings in September

This September there are some really important meetings coming up to discuss the future of the NHS in Wandsworth.

Wandsworth PCT, Annual General Meeting
10th September
6.30 to 8pm.
Tooting (exact location tbc)

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St George's Hospital, Board Meeting
16th September
2pm to 5pm
Philip Constable Board Room
1st Floor
Grosvenor Wing

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St George's Hospital, Annual General Meeting
16th September
5pm
Monckton Theatre
Ground Floor
Grosvenor Wing

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Wandsworth Link Executive Meeting (first one in public)
22nd September
Putney Library
5/7 Disraeli Road
SW15 2DR
6 to 8 pm

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Wandsworth PCT Board Meeting
24th September
Queen Mary's Hospital
Sheen Room
SW15 5PN
1pm

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Wandsworth Link gets off the ground

One of the changes that has occured in Wandsworth recently has been the creation of the Wandsworth Link. Previously, we used to have patient forums who acted as the voice of the patient for our different hospitals. These were very successful and got on with raising unglamorous, but important issues, and ensuring that they hospitals acted upon them. A prime example of this was the good work that the St George's patients forums did with the issues surrounding patient transport.

However, the Government decided that they were going to abolish patient forums and instead replace them with something called the Link system. This would be an opt in membership based organisation, with both individual and group members, that would scrutinise local healthcare issues.

Why do the Government always try to constantly change things in the NHS just as they are working?

Wandsworth Council were VERY disappointed to see the patient forums disbanded just as they were starting to really make an impact. But they got on the case straight away to get a Wandsworth Link going. As a result we have a functioning Link in place when most areas have nothing.

The early meetings of the Link have had some controversy about them. An organisation called the Wandsworth Care Alliance is supposed to act as the "host" for the Link. This means that they get money from Wandsworth Council to act as a facilitator and provide practical assistance to the volunteers who are on the Link itself. The Link is supposed to be both democratic and self governing. However, some members of the Link were unhappy with the democratic process that Wandsworth Care Alliance outlined for the opening meeting to decide who should be on the Link executive. As a result the first meeting was a raucous affair which resulted in no elections but instead the appointment of all those who had submitted their names forward for election.

We need to find a suitable democratic system next time around...

There were also problems with the initial meetings of the Link executive. These were decided to be in private so that the team could get to know each other. Many people were dismayed at the lack of transparency that this implied.

Perhaps next time we can have the meetings in public and the Link executive can have a private drink afterwards to get to know each other better...

Anyway, it is very important that the Wandsworth Link succeeds. Although it has had a rocky start there are some very good people involved in it (I have met with several of them already and spoken to the Wandsworth Care Alliance about things). I am sure that when these initial teething problems settle down it will start to make an impact. To do that it needs to do the following six things:

1. Develop a proper democratic framework.

2. Be open and transparent in its processes.

3. Fully take on board all the expertise of the old Patient Forums and not start from scratch.

4. Always send representatives to all the NHS Board meetings.

5. Focus on two or three achievable campaigns at a time and not try to do everything.

6. Remember that while the members of the Link will be people very engaged with their community, many of the users are not so engaged but still need representation - like busy young professionals and the housebound elderly.

I would encourage people to become a member and have their say. There is no better way to show that you care about improving our local NHS and Social care provision. You can join here.

Welcome!

Welcome to the Wandsworth NHS Watch blog. Many people in Wandsworth struggle to find out what is happening with our local NHS. This blog is designed to help people find out more.

If you have any stories that you would like shared then do please contact local NHS campaigner Mark Clarke at mark@markclarke.net.