Annual General Meeting

The 2023 Annual General Meeting took place on Wednesday 13 September at Basildon Hospital's Essex Cardiothoracic Centre.

Before the meeting, guests were invited to the AGM Markteplace where teams from across the Trust showcased their achievements. We were joined by the Anchor Programme, Simulation Suite, Dementia, Tissue Viability, Falls, Hospital@Home and many more.

Nigel Beverley, our Trust Chair, facilitated the AGM which included a keynote presentation from Dr Sanjiv Ahluwalia, Head of School of Medicine at Anglia Ruskin University.

Held in the world-renowned CTC building, the meeting also included showcase presentations from the Inherited Cardiac Conditions service and our Anchor Programme team.

How does the Trust plan to continuously improve patient experience through patient and carer feedback?

Mid and South Essex Foundation Trust are committed to being an organisation that actively listens to our feedback and use it to drive continuous improvement across all our services.

The Trust maintains a high level of engagement with our patients and communities in a variety of ways. We also gain feedback via our PALS and Complaints Services, and the Friends and Family Test results. Co-production with our communities is an integral part of the Trust Quality Strategy and enables us to engage as early as possible in particularly when developing new services.

The Patient and Care Experience Strategy was co-produced with our patients, carers, staff, professional partners and voluntary services. The ongoing progress and compliance is overseen by our various patient and carer engagement committees. This ensures we continue to receive real time feedback and oversight.

Priorities

• Embedding of the recently launched Patient and Care Experience Strategy
• Reshaping the Patient Involvement and Engagement Model
• Ongoing support and collaboration with Governors
• Reshaping MSE Careers Steering Group
• Reviewing and improving mechanisms for capturing and measuring real time patient feedback
• Recruitment of Patient Experience Coordinator
• Relaunch Staff Champions of Patient Experience Program
• Implementation of Carers Pass in Southend (Pilot)
• Patient and Carer engagement - Outpatient Transformation Program
• Patient and Public Partnership Program.

How has the Trust responded to the Autumn 2022 inspection report? How can patients be confident they will be treated appropriately?

• The Autumn 2022 CQC inspection included a Trust wide Well-Led inspection and the core services of Maternity at all 3 sites and Diagnostic Imaging at Southend Hospital
• The report was published on 23 December 2022 and an Improvement Plan in response to the findings was put in place early January 2023
• The Improvement Plan contained 37 actions (Maternity 27; Diagnostic Imaging 8; Trust wide 2).
• As at 12 September 2023, 14 actions have been closed, 3 are awaiting closure pending the collection of evidence, and 20 actions remain in progress. It is anticipated that actions will be closed by December 2023.

Significant improvements have been made within our maternity services and diagnostic imaging services over the last year.

• We have recruited additional diagnostic imaging and maternity staff to ensure our services have the right number of staff to keep our patients safe
• Triage processes for our maternity services has improved resulting in women being seen promptly at triage, and we have implemented actions to ensure patients received their imaging in a more timely manner
• New staff receive a timely induction and staff meetings are in place where safety information can be discussed
• Safety Champions are embedded within the maternity service
• The maintenance and cleaning of equipment is more robust and medication is confirmed as being stored safely
• We have implemented robust processes to ensure the storage and distribution of breast milk follows safe practices
• We continue to take action to ensure that staff complete mandatory training
• We have provided additional training to ensure staff across the trust have a full understanding of duty of candour requirements. We have taken some specific actions in Diagnostic Imaging services including targeted training, sharing the DoC guide and undertaking spot checks and audits.
• We are working on improving our incident processes to ensure learning can be shared as we move to the new incident framework. We have also taken some specific action in Diagnostic Imaging to ensure that incidents are shared with external third party reporting providers.
• The CCTV within Diagnostic Imaging services is now working and we have confirmed that signs are in place to inform patients, visitors and staff that CCTV is in use
• We are developing policies to support our paediatric patients within diagnostic imaging
• The findings from the well led review in 2022 and the subsequent inspection of Medical Core Services in January 2023 have been used to develop and shape our Good Governance Foundations for the Future Improvement Programme. This is focusing on ward to board governance to ensure appropriate escalations, improvement the identification and management of risks, ensuring we participate in national clinical audits and take action where gaps are highlighted, and in the continual review of and alignment of our policies, procedures and guidelines.
• We are currently undertaking Self-Assessments against the Well-Led key lines of enquiry as part of our continuous improvement journey and commitment to improve our CQC ratings.

When will you be giving a public update on your CQC action plans as the CQC?

The update on the status of our CQC improvement plan will be presented at the next Board meeting once we have received publication of the latest report.

The Annual General Meeting 2022 took place on Tuesday 20 September 2022 at Southend Hospital's Education Centre.

Guests were invited to attend a marketplace event ahead of the formal meeting. Guests were able to visit stalls and find out about some of the services at Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust.

During the AGM, guests heard from Nigel Beverley, Trust Chair, Hannah Coffey, Acting Chief Executive at the time, and Sally Holland, Lead Governor, about the performance of the Trust over the past year.

Guests also heard from Professor Tony Young OBE, National Clinical Lead for Innovation at NHS England, Consultant Urological Surgeon and Associate Medical Director at MSEFT and Director of Medical Innovation and Entrepreneurship Anglia Ruskin University, who gave an engaging and informative presentation on transforming patient care through innovation.

The Annual General Meeting 2021 took place virtually on Wednesday 22 September 2021 using Microsoft Teams Live.

It was an opportunity to hear about the performance of the Trust during that year and to hear our plans for the future.

Guests heard from Dr Chris Westall on the Future of Critical Care and had the opportunity to put their questions to the Trust Board and the Executive Team.

To watch a recording of the meeting, visit https://bit.ly/39tt517 (select the 'join as an attendee' option or 'open in browser').