y CEO Report February 2025
1.0 National and system update
1.1 NHS England has now published the national operational planning guidance for 2025/26, which includes details of priorities and a number of specific requirements for trusts and Integrated Care Systems (ICS). We are working through how we will meet these in preparing our operational, workforce and financial plans for the year ahead, as part of the ICS submission by Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire & Berkshire West Integrated Care Board (BOB ICB).
1.2 Part of this involves our financial allocation from the ICB, which proposes at this stage a further potentially significant reduction in real-term funding for the Trust, with a proposal (as with 2024/25) to withhold any potential growth funding, and a 5% top slice of other non-core funding lines. The ICB and Trust planning teams are working through the implications of this, alongside other BOB providers, as the March national planning submission deadline approaches.
1.3 The Buckinghamshire Executive Partnership met earlier this month to review progress against this year’s priorities of: transforming Special Educational Needs & Disabilities (SEND); joining up care; and integrated neighbourhood working. Partners across Buckinghamshire are committed to moving to a prevention-focused, person-centred approach to care in our communities, and are developing plans to deliver the Neighbourhood Health Guidelines 2025/26, which were published alongside the operational planning guidance.
2.0 Outstanding care
2.1 Key performance data up to the month of January are presented in the Integrated Performance Report with supporting narrative. Despite a lot of hard work by my clinical and operational colleagues, there are patients on our cancer pathways waiting too long for their diagnostic tests or to start treatment, as our capacity struggles to keep up with demand in a few specialties. We are looking closely at this to improve our performance against the 28-day Faster Diagnostic Standard and 62-day target for starting treatment from referral.
2.2 Our maternity and digital teams have this month implemented one of the biggest changes to date as part of our programme of improving our digital health and transitioning to electronic patient records. After a lot of hard work, training and preparation, Badger Notes is now live and replaces the purple folders of hard copy notes which any family who has experienced maternity care at BHT over the years will be familiar with. This is a significant change for our maternity colleagues, and hopefully a greatly improved experience for our service users. My thanks also to our digital colleagues for their expertise in making this happen so smoothly.
2.3 Well done to our children’s surgery team who received a positive review following a visit from the Thames Valley and Wessex Surgery in Children Operational Delivery Network. They highlighted the following:
- good practice in profiling children and young people on the patient tracking list to ensure we are providing equitable reductions in waiting times to this cohort compared with adult comparators;
- our commitment to developing the pre-operative assessment service, including notable collaboration across care groups with paediatric nurses undertaking the training, and ambitions for the future that tailor to the specific needs of children and young people;
- our innovative approach in theatre scheduling;
- our family approach to governance seeking the views of children and young people through our surgical children and young people committee, and babies, children and young people committee; and
- our multi-disciplinary training commitment at a regional level.
2.4 In January we welcomed the Care Quality Commission to an announced routine inspection of Ionising Radiation (Medical Exposure) Regulations (IR(ME)R). We received positive feedback from the inspectors, with no specific concerns highlighted. My thanks to all colleagues involved in this inspection.
2.5 Earlier this month I was fortunate to spend time with some of our radiographers based at Stoke Mandeville Hospital and it was fantastic to see the breadth of imaging techniques this team cover, as well as witness some of our state-of-the-art interventional radiology equipment in action. Thank you to my colleagues for their time.
2.6 Huge congratulations to one of our esteemed plastic surgeons, Professor Fadi Issa who has been elected by the University of Oxford Electoral Board as its new Professor of Transplantation at the Nuffield Department of Surgery. Professor Issa already leads the Transplantation Research Immunology Group and is the first plastic surgeon since 1944 to be appointed to a post of this standing at the University.
2.7 At Month 10, the Trust is in a deficit position of £5.2m in line with plan. We do have a credible route to delivering our planned £(0.7)m deficit by year end, albeit with significant risk. We have delivered £21.0m of our £39.4m capital plan. Jon Evans (Chief Financial Officer) will update further through the Month 10 Finance Report.
3.0 Healthy communities
3.1 I was delighted to join one of the Opportunity Bucks Community Action Days this month in Sands, High Wycombe. These days bring together partners from across organisations to support the safety and quality of local communities, including Thames Valley Police and teams from Buckinghamshire Council and our Trust. It was fantastic to see people from across disciplines coming together towards the common goal of the county’s levelling up programme.
4.0 Great place to work
4.1 This month we celebrated National Apprenticeship Week with a range of webinars and activities supporting and encouraging colleagues to consider apprenticeships. We are fortunate to have access to a wide range of opportunities, and it was wonderful to join many of my colleagues in celebrating completing their apprenticeships last week.
4.2 Race Equality Week was a chance to reinforce the Trust’s commitment to address equality barriers and promote our adoption of the See ME First initiative, which the Board will recall we launched last Autumn.
4.3 Ramadam will begin at the end of February and to support colleagues who will be fasting during this time, our Chaplaincy team will once again be offering Ramadam gift packs including prayer booklets and mat.