3 February 2009
Trust Chairman celebrates his first anniversary
Trust Chairman, Mike Malone-Lee, has marked his first year in the job by giving a frank interview to the local press. During the hour long interview Mike began by talking about the Foundation Trust process which has taken up a lot of his time in his first year as Chairman.
Mike said:” Becoming an FT is very important to this Trust and I think it brings two main benefits to the organisation. Firstly it means we can be more responsive to the needs of local people as our public constituency will consist of people from the main mid Essex towns - Chelmsford, Braintree, Maldon and Witham. Secondly, it will allow us more freedom as an organisation rather than always having to be responsive to central Government. From my experience of the NHS I know that it is very hierarchical which means each organisation looks up to another e.g. a Trust looks to the Strategic Health Authority who in turns looks to the DoH and so on, so by becoming a FT there will be a lot less of that. The whole FT application process is very intensive so it can be very easy for a management team to take its eye off the ball on day to day activities, but this has definitely not been the case during the last year when we gone from strength to strength.”
Mike praised Trust staff for getting through a few rough years for the organisation when it went through a period of turnaround. He also talked about the tremendous achievement of the Trust for nearly paying off its historic debt so at the end of this financial year we should be debt free.
Mike continued:” The Trust is in a lot stronger position now than when I joined one year ago. As well as making huge savings to ensure we pay off our historic debt the waiting times for nearly all of our patients from GP referral to treatment is now 18 weeks or less, which again has been the result of a lot of hard work by many people. Things have certainly changed a lot since waiting times were introduced in 1992 when I worked at the DOH and you had to wait up to two years for an operation.”
When Mike was asked to single out the current priority for the Trust he named the patient experience as being top of the Trust’s agenda for this year.
He said:” We are very good at treating our patients when they get into the Hospital, but we are not so good at how they actually get in here. We know from the mystery shopper exercise that our new director of insuring undertook that our signage leaves a lot to be desired and is an area that we will definitely work on. We are introducing patient experience training for front line staff to improve the way we deal with our patients. This is a vitally important area if we want to survive out there in a very competitive NHS.”
Mike concluded by saying how much he is looking forward to the next three years of his four year reign as chairman.
ENDS
Media contact : Jo Triggs tel: (01245) 514235 | Mobile : 0790 005 4948
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