30 April 2021 – NHS Non-Executive Directors webinar

This week’s session opened in conversation with special guest Stephen Barnes, a non-executive director at East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust.

Stephen said: “There is a growing realisation that the success of the system will only be as a result of the whole system succeeding. It’s no good if one trust is doing really well and another badly as overall the system will still fail. So overall there has to be a real joint approach to risk and performance of the system. This thinking will have meaningful change in the way we share knowledge, innovation and executives with their time working across the system.

“The second realisation is that the capacity and resources required to share across the organisations will deplete capacity from our overview of our own organisation. There is a real development need that will grow for backfilling in terms of developing execs and non-execs in terms of their work when looking at the operational needs of our organisation. It is important that the board and sub-committees have the space to develop and address this.” […]

“There is a massive three-way pull on board members and executives. First of all, to deal with the system development, also to deliver with provider collaboratives and all they entail and finally there is a pull to deliver on ICP development. Our executives are really pressured to manage the system and organisation so we have to deal carefully with capacity issues within this space. That is where innovation and productivity will become important.”

Also overheard during this week’s webinar:

“I have a view that we should be deep diving on the assurance framework where there could be scenarios that damage the single organisation or region. A real example is fragile services across a system that can be tricky to triangulate without coming at it from a different perspective in terms of going through performance data in a way that is looking at where we aren’t meeting targets.”

“We have the beginnings of an ICS but there isn’t a system-level understanding. I have been wondering whether to invite myself onto the boards of other organisations in the system to see how they do it and understand things across the group. The issue about having a systemwide BAF is really important and something we need to think about. It currently doesn’t look at population health and I think we should. We have a long way to go before we get a systems approach with this which includes local authorities and the voluntary sector.”

These meetings are by invitation and are open to all NHS non-executives directors, chairs and associate non-executive directors of NHS providers. Others may attend by special invitation. For further details, visit our website https://www.good-governance.org.uk/events/.

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions about these webinars, please contact: events@good-governance.org.uk