Weeknote: 13 to 17 May 2024

What did I enjoy?

I spent Wednesday in Derby with members of my Digital Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC) team, including a visit to the NHS 111 contact centre run by DHU Healthcare. We were all made very welcome, and were privileged to listen in on calls by clinicians and non-clinical health advisors. The work we do in Digital UEC has a direct impact on average call handling times, and on the appropriateness of service recommendations in 111. As more new colleagues join us in the coming months, I hope they’ll all have a chance to go and see 111 or 999 phone services in action early on in their time with the team.

I finally used some train time to write up (or rather, edit down) the one-page note on AI in 111 and 999 that I had promised our national director. We’d had some great input from colleagues and the biggest challenge was distilling it all into a concise note ahead of a call on Friday. In that call, Laura, our head of product for safe and effective triage, kept us all on the straight-and-narrow by asking “what problem are we trying to solve?” We must avoid jumping too quickly to assumed solutions, but there are definitely opportunities to use AI and machine learning intelligently to make things better for patients and frontline staff. I was pleased to hear that one of the functional teams which has struggled with staffing to support my portfolio’s live services can find the capacity to look at AI opportunities with us.

What would I have liked to do more of?

A constructive afternoon with Mandy, Jacqui and Mona, the three most senior leaders in Digital UEC, where we worked through 3 of my 6 objectives for 2024-25. We don’t get these sustained in-person conversations often enough, and still need to find the space to cover the remaining 3 objectives. If the 4 of us can all be on the same page, we’ll be better able to support our teams through an inherently uncertain 10.5 months to come.

In between some other meetings, I popped in and out of a webinar about health and housing, which united my main job in the NHS with my non-exec role in a local housing association. There were great presentations from leaders in both sectors, and I hope to catch up on the ones I missed when the recording is shared.

What am I looking forward to next week?

A busy week ahead:

• On Monday, a call about the analytical work embedded in our live services, including the data linkage between urgent care triage patterns and secondary care outcomes, which we use to continuously improve our products, and give insights back to local NHS managers to help them plan their services.
• On Tuesday, the Digital UEC Assurance Board, where we govern our work, with senior stakeholders in the room. On the agenda: the strategy and 24/25 objectives for the Find the Right Service product cluster; progress since we integrated 111 online with the NHS App; and our new approach to interoperability in UEC.
• On Wednesday, a monthly in-person meeting of our Digital UEC leadership team.
• On Thursday a collaboration session with our colleagues who oversee 111 and 999 as a whole in the NHS England Chief Operating Officer’s directorate.

What do I need to take care of?

I’m hearing encouraging signs about the recruitment to fill vacancies in my team, but I’m still concerned that we won’t fill roles fast enough to meet all our commitments this year. In a plate-spinning act, trying to keep up momentum on both permanent and non-permanent resourcing side-by-side, there’s always a risk that one of the plates will come crashing down while we’re busy attending to the other.

We’re still in a difficult phase-change on the work on first contact across primary, urgent, community, and self-care. Next week, we need to get senior colleagues aligned on the next steps, and establish the leadership structure for the work as it mobilises across multiple teams.