CEO Blog - October 2014

It's just over a year since we received confirmation of our licence as an Academic Health Science Network and it has been great to see the plans created with members begin to deliver results. Year 1 summary – covering set up & first 6 months from licence – gives the detail and our business plan sets out this year’s aims. This blog gives me a chance for a regular informal update on what the AHSN & I’ve been doing. We are a member led organisation & communicating with frontline and senior staff across Wessex is important to us – to make the impact for patients & the economy we seek, everyone has a contribution to make.

A major focus for us in September is preparing for the Patient Safety Collaborative. Keith Lincoln, AHSN Director of Quality, is leading this work and is keen to ensure we shape programmes with patients & public engagement and with our member organisations. We are also linking with NHS IQ and the NHS England team nationally as well as the area team and Health Education Wessex. Work we did early in 2014 – with nominees from across Wessex – steered us towards ‘improving the quality of transfers of care’. We will be wanting to use the strengths of our network  structure, not duplicating, thinking whole system & making sure we can demonstrate measureable improvement. More information on this soon….

If you want to receive snippets of news and information on a regular basis you can follow me on Twitter@MartinSWessex and the AHSN @WessexAHSN

Martin Stephens

Chief Executive