Virtual Waste Reduction Conference – Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust

Engaging Clinical Colleagues in Waste Reduction (virtually)
 
Back in March when the national lockdown was imposed the PMO here at Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust reluctantly postponed the ‘Improving the Quality of our Services through Clinical and Financial Collaboration’ conference due to the pandemic. This was a blow as the previous year’s event was a real success, over 300 delegates attended making the event a key contributor to staff engagement around generating ideas for waste reduction.
 
In April the PMO took the decision to deliver the conference on a virtual platform as the need to engage staff with the planning of the 21/22 Programme was essential to support delivery of the Trust’s 21/22 waste reduction target and to meet the Trust’s strategic goal ‘to be the best for specialist and integrated care’.
 
On the morning of the 7th October the PMO and colleagues supported the successful delivery of the conference virtually using MS Teams. The Conference was opened by the Chief Executive Julian Hartley who spoke of the importance of delivering waste reduction to release opportunity for investment in patient care. We then had the pleasure of hosting the Chief Financial Officer for NHS England and NHS Improvement Julian Kelly who gave us an overview of the current financial state of the NHS and plans for the future. The Director of Finance Simon Worthington then continued the theme on a local level, and was followed by David Berridge (Deputy Chief Medical Officer) who presented some of the investment in patient care that waste reduction has helped to realise throughout the year. The Trust Chair Linda Pollard then thanked all the delegates for all their efforts during the pandemic and the continued delivery of Waste Reduction.  
 
The next section of the conference involved a range of presentations from colleagues around the organisation who had successfully implemented waste reduction in their areas. The speakers demonstrated how joined up working with finance colleagues had not only reduced financial waste, but improved patient care, patient experience and timely access to hospital services within respective areas. The morning was rounded off with group work and a series of questions aimed at the presenters via the Slido platform.
 
Like last year we had almost 300 attendees, representing all 18 frontline departments (or ‘Clinical Service Units’ as they’re known locally) and staff groups in key positions of leadership, open and willing to engage in waste reduction.
 
So far feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with the vast majority of attendees finding it a useful and insightful day. There was an especially positive response from delegates to the presentations, and having Julian Kelly as an external speaker was very well received. Despite the success of the conference, we don’t want to rest on our laurels. The ideas for waste reduction have been coming thick and fast into the PMO, and we need to jump on this momentum in order to capture the enthusiasm for waste reduction and keep it going.
 
As a team, we’re always keen to share ideas internally and externally with other Trusts; feel free to get in touch – leedsth-tr.pmo.finance@nhs.net.