Chief Executive Fortnightly Blog to NHS Orkney Staff – 29 April 2024
Message for All NHS Orkney Staff
Dear Team Orkney
In this fortnightly blog I update you on two important issues (1) our Financial Plan for the year and (2) our Delivering what matters to our community 2024-2028.
- Our Financial Plan for 2024/25
We ended the 2023/24 financial year with a £5.1m overspend – £2m above our original 2023/24 Financial Plan, though an improved position from the £6.2m overspend which we were forecasting at the end of October 2023. It is important to note that this position is provisional, and we are in discussions with Scottish Government (SG) around any support funding for 2023/24.
We submitted our three-year Financial Plan to the (SG) in March for scrutiny and review.
The main requirements of our Financial Plan – consistent with other Health Boards – is that we achieve a minimum of 3% recurrent savings, evidence an improved forecast outturn compared to the position we reported at the start of 2023/24 and have a clear path to balance over the coming three years.
NHS Orkney submitted a plan with a £5.8m deficit position for 2024/25, excluding the £0.99m of repayable brokerage the organisation is expecting to receive from the Scottish Government. As we cannot report an improved forecast outturn position versus last year, our plan is yet to be agreed by SG. This position is mainly due to our historical reliance on non-recurrent savings, temporary staff due to workforce constraints, geographical challenges of delivering island healthcare and inflationary pressures across pay and non-pay areas.
Whilst our plan is yet to be agreed by SG, this does not affect our ability to operate, and we will continue to drive forward the change required in 2024/25. We are in regular contact with SG to set out the improvement work taking place, and they are supportive of our approach.
Our plan for 2024/25 includes a £4m (6% of our resource limit) efficiency target, of which £2.9m (73%) is recurrent, 4.5% of our total revenue resource limit.
Our delivery vehicle is our Team Orkney Improving Together programme, which has 12 workstreams and clear Executive and Delivery Leads, and clear governance wrapped around it – notably the Delivery Group and Improvement Board.
We have learnt from our experience over the last year and reflected on this as a Board. The plan we have submitted to SG is one that is ambitious but realistic and deliverable and sets out over a longer three-year period how we will make marginal improvements to our position year-on-year.
Our integrated improvement programme also ensures that we consider financial improvement alongside quality and safety, digital and operational improvements – an approach which has SG support so that we can deliver sustainable improvements.
Several months ago, I asked SG to extend our external support so that we can continue the momentum we have seen in recent months and give a longer period of time to ensure we put in place the sustainable foundations so that when our external support steps out we can stand on our own two feet. We are not quite there yet and therefore I am grateful to SG for agreeing this extended support, which has seen a new blend of support and approach, now we have entered the delivery phase of our efficiency programme for 2024/25, with a new Recovery Director (Paul Corlass) and new Director of Improvement (Phil Tydeman) now in place.
We will continue to share regular updates on how we are doing with the delivery of our £4m efficiency programme month on month for transparency.
- Delivering what matters to our community 2024-2028.
After many months of listening to feedback and hearing stories from our patients, community and staff, we have launched our new Corporate Strategy, which is called Delivering what matters to our community: 2024-2028.
Our new vision (promise to our community) is a really simple one: Looking after our community and providing excellent care.
And our new values are intended to be memorable too – not least because they are ORK for short:
- Open and honest
- Respect
- Kindness
We have five new strategic objectives – people, patient safety, quality and experience, performance, potential and place.
This strategy will be different for a number of reasons. It is the only game in town for us now and is our ‘compass’ that will guide our decision-making. We will bring it to life every day in all we do. It has a set of priorities that match what matters to you and our community and which are measurable and realistic. We are determined to follow through on what we say we are going to do. We will align all we do to our strategy – induction, appraisal, setting personal objectives, meeting agendas, staff awards categories to give some examples, so we get a golden thread and consistency of approach across the organisation and focus on what matters most.
You can access our new strategy on the link here. Thank you to everyone who took time to have their say – and for helping to make our new strategy meaningful and memorable.
Laura Skaife-Knight
Chief Executive