‘We need to adapt and improve’ – New county health boss reflects on challenge ahead

The new head of two Shropshire NHS health trusts says he hopes to restore “confidence and pride” in county healthcare services.

The new chair-in-common for Shropshire’s hospital and community health NHS trusts, Andrew Morgan, says services will need to adapt to a changing national landscape after arriving this week with a brief of improving joined-up working across both organisations.

Shropshire Community NHS Trust (ShropCom) and the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) work separately to provide healthcare in settings across the county and Mr Morgan, who retired from a Chief Executive role across community and hospital services in Lincolnshire earlier this summer, says finding areas where the trusts can collaborate will improve services.

“There’s lots to be done,” he said.

“I’m under no illusion that we need to adapt the NHS and we need to improve the NHS but it’s provided by fantastic people who equally love it, and I think we know the public also share in that ‘love affair’ with the NHS.

“I feel a responsibility as a public servant not to let them down and I will do my bit to make this an absolutely great part of the country in which to receive care, and a great part of the country in which to work for the NHS.

“The notion of having a chair in common across the two trusts is to indicate that we want to integrate our services, and we want to have single teams where that makes sense. It’s not an organisational structure process, it’s about what services do we provide to the public and by having a more joined up approach between the trusts how do we deliver the best possible return we can give the good people of Shropshire.”

Speaking after the ShropCom annual general meeting in Telford this week, Mr Morgan added that restoring confidence in the county’s under pressure emergency departments was also at the top of his in-tray after beginning his joint role on Monday (October 3).

“Part of it is restoring public confidence in some services, not all of them, but I was very conscious when I applied for the role that there have been issues particularly in hospital services in this part of the country. That didn’t put me off,” he said.

“What we need to do is instil confidence and pride in people that when they need our services they will be available, they won’t have to wait forever to access them and they will be of really high, safe quality.

“I know I’ve got to do my bit as chair of the two boards to integrate services where that’s necessary but absolutely never forget that we’ve got other people’s loved ones that are entrusted to us and I take that responsibility very seriously.”

The appointment comes at a potential turning point for NHS services in England, with the incoming Labour government having commissioned independent peer and surgeon Lord Darzi to report on the current state of the country’s health service.

“Lord Darzi’s report is a diagnostic of the NHS which the new government asked for, and I think the three shifts envisaged in that are entirely the right ones,” added Mr Morgan.

“The shift from hospital to community, the shift form an analogue world to a digital one and the shift from sickness to prevention – that’s absolutely right and we’ve been talking about that for years. What we’ve failed to do is really embed that in what we do.

“Patients say to us when they need care they want it as close to home as possible, they don’t want to wait forever for it, they want to feel safe and confident that it will be of the right quality for them so I think the national diagnostic is entirely right.

“We await the government’s response to that, they’ve promised us a ten year plan in the spring, but what we don’t do is just sit back and wait. We have a responsibility now to improve our services and to engage our workforce in that.

“You can keep throwing money at it and I will absolutely be batting for as much of a share of the national cake as I can possibly get for Shropshire.

“But I also accept that we’ve got to prove that we’re using what we’ve got well, and I think that although people love the concept of the NHS, that service which is free at the point of need regardless of cost, they’ve slightly fallen out of love with the way that we’re delivering that.

“I’m also really conscious that day in, day out we still provide great care to many, many people.

“One of the things that keeps me going when times get tough is that when I go home at night I know that during that day we will have provided great care to thousands of people, we’ll have saved lives, we’ll have taken people out of pain and we’ll have put minds at rest. That feels like a great thing to do.

“But I’m also not blind to the fact that we’ll have also got some things wrong and there’s things we will need to get better at.”