Clinical Services Review
John Newman talks to Patrick McGahon, Director of Service and Commercial Development at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust about the development of a clinical strategy to underpin an integrated business plan for the foundation trust application:
When did you first work with Matrix and what was the Particular Challenge that you faced?
In terms of working with Matrix, we engaged with them initially in 2007. The challenge we faced was developing a clinical strategy that would underpin our integrated business plan for our foundation trust application. To ensure ‘buy-in’ to the new strategy we were focused on securing affective clinical engagement.
How did Matrix help you frame your particular challenge?
Jacque Mallender came to see our key executives and we formulated a plan of action from there. Jacque used her expertise from other projects, for example she had previously worked in Durham and she was able to use that as a framework in which we developed our own personalised solution.
What was the approach Matrix used and what did the solution look like for you?
We under took 3 workshops that were facilitated by Matrix, they focused on the questions: Where are we now as a trust? Where do we want to be? How are we going to get there? Matrix within that provided some helpful analysis around benchmarks against upper quartile providers and the workshops included a ‘market place’ of this information where by consultants and mangers during the lunch breaks could review on an informal basis. This resulted in a lot of discussion around the key challenges the Trust faced.
Myriam (Medical Director at Matrix) did some very effective work in terms of a national evidence review. We also developed a specific website which gave people a chance to read the information from the workshops and also interact with us.
What benefits have you seen from the work Matrix has done?
The key thing for us was the clinical engagement and the recognition within the trust that there was a need for change. From there we used a smaller group led by the medical director to develop a clinical strategy which underpins our next 5 year plan.
How have you found working with the Matrix team?
We found Matrix to be very approachable, very knowledgeable, very pragmatic (thinking how to take things forward) but also quite innovative and the key for us is that we engaged Matrix to do a second project on a different area which is a reflection of how highly we regard them.
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