Jan Sobieraj

By Jan Sobieraj JanSobieraj

One of the areas that personally I am really interested in is how we can establish Lincolnshire as a national centre for rural health and care as a way to lead innovative solutions and help us overcome the issues we face.

As a healthcare organisation in a dispersed and rural county we face a number of challenges around attracting people to work and live in our region.

These include an increase in demand due to an ageing population with more complex conditions and a lack of joined up services and providing the right balance of affordable, accessible and sustainable care.

You will have heard that keeping services as they are now in Lincolnshire is not an option.

In fact if we do nothing we will be facing a possible deficit of £182 million across all healthcare organisations in the county in the next few years.

Earlier this month I led the first symposium in Lincolnshire looking at how we can put Lincolnshire on the map by creating a centre for excellence in policy development, research, technology, education and training for rural health care.

Over 70 people attended the event from as far afield as America to hear our challenges, ambitions and discuss ideas to make this a reality.

Representatives from across the NHS, local councils, Health Education England, research bodies, universities, Age UK, charities and housing providers heard from key speakers including Professor Ira Moscovice, director of Rural Health Institute at the University of Minnesota.

Professor Moscovice gave a fascinating insight into the rural health care and research carried out in the United States and the key steps that need to be taken to establish our own centre of excellence.

He also highlighted the issues that they face with nursing recruitment and access to broadband which sounded very similar to some of the challenges we experience here in Lincolnshire.

Mike Hannay, chief executive of East Midlands Academic Health Science Network, explained that research is a powerful tool that can be used to develop new policies and can give organisations a real voice.

Nigel Edwards, chief executive of the Nuffield Trust, spoke about how we can make hospitals in rural regions more sustainable.

There is still much more work to do to develop this and it is not a short term plan.

However the event highlighted the real potential we have and was a great opportunity to consider our challenges and the opportunities we have to take this forward.

We need to find a different way to tackle the long standing issues we face.

I believe that we need to do something that makes Lincolnshire a fantastic place that attracts people to live, work and stay here.

To progress this I will be talking to key stakeholders to agree how we can now take the first steps to achieve this.

As I said at the symposium, the future is in our hands.

The creation of a national centre will benefit all rural health and care communities across the country as well as supporting the development of our own here in Lincolnshire.

Jan Sobieraj is the new Chief Executive of United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust.

By Jan Sobieraj JanSobieraj

We have seen increased demand on our services recently. This not only has an impact on our patients, who can wait longer to be seen and treated, it also puts undue stress on our staff, who are working tirelessly to ensure our patients receive good quality and timely care.

I’d like to thank them publicly for their hard work, professionalism and commitment.

Our hospitals have teams working to ensure we have plans in place to discharge patients when they are ready to leave.

If you are acutely unwell, then hospital is the best place to be, but it is important that you are discharged once you are medically fit otherwise this can have an adverse effect on your ongoing recovery.

There’s lots of evidence that long stays can harm you. Every patient who comes into hospital has an estimated discharge date but sometimes these can be delayed for a variety of reasons.

To address this we have introduced new approaches to prevent unnecessary delays and improve patient experience.

These include SAFER, a set of standards to improve the movement of patients in, around and out of hospital.

At Lincoln we are introducing a visual system called Red and Green to help identify wasted time in a patient’s journey and reduce unnecessary blockages.

Pilgrim Hospital has implemented the Pride and Joy system, which involves the sickest patients being reviewed as a priority before 10am and agreeing planned discharges for the day.

The teams will then meet again in the afternoon to ensure the plans agreed during the morning are completed the same day.

We work closely with our partners including the community trust and social care to discharge patients when they are medically fit to leave hospital but we also need support from our patients and carers in their care and discharge date.

Although you might have come in by ambulance you will need to organise your transport back home. If you don’t drive can you arrange for a relative or friend to come and collect you?

It’s also important to make sure you have everything you need at home when you return from the hospital to help you in your recovery including food, supplies, medication and support.

We have increased the availability of our pharmacy and therapy services so that patients can access these seven days a week during the winter period.

We are also looking at how we reduce the number of people being admitted to hospital unnecessarily.

One of these initiatives is a care home project which involves a team of ULHT doctors, nurses and therapists who are starting to visit every nursing and residential home in the Lincoln area over the next two years.

The team assesses every resident of every home, including reviewing medications and assessments of cognition, mobility, mental capacity and future care needs.

In the first three months since the team visited one care home in Lincoln, the number of hospital admissions for their residents reduced by 64% compared with the previous quarter.

Jan Sobieraj is the new Chief Executive of United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust.