Suzanne Rankin
Chief Executive

You will have seen in the news that a number of cases of a new variant of Covid-19, known as the SARS-CoV-2 variant which originated in South Africa, has been identified in a small number of localities across England.

One of these areas is in the borough of Woking. A similar surveillance exercise is expected to extend into an area in Egham in the coming days.

Public Health England have swiftly mobilised a response to contain the new variant and restrict further transmission in these areas. Part of this is the deployment of targeted testing, which means residents in the areas will be contacted and then visited at home with a PCR test to complete whether they have symptoms or not.

Suzanne Rankin
Chief Executive

Welcome to this week’s message. You’ll have seen my message a couple of weeks ago where I shared our Main Effort infographic and the key priorities we must remain focused upon during these exceptionally busy times. One of those priorities is to evolve our ways of working to more digitally enabled, patient safety-focussed, efficient methods and the implementation of the new electronic patient record, Surrey Safe Care, is absolutely key.

The delivery of a smart, integrated digital system is an important foundation of our future aspirations. Without this, we can’t grow and evolve our services in a modern and sustainable way, including our ambition to create more services in the community ‘closer to home’ and enable patients to manage their own care more easily. The amount of work involved in building and implementing this new system is immense but the opportunities it presents are equally huge!

Suzanne Rankin
Chief Executive

This week I’d like to reflect on what is happening across the Trust and how we prioritise what we do in these exceptionally busy times. I am sure, like myself and my colleagues in the executive team, many of you will feel a bit pulled in different directions at the moment.

There is an incredible amount happening as we work to cope with increasing numbers of Covid patients and those attending A&E and requiring admission (as is usual during the winter period), restore and recover those services suspended or reduced during the first wave of the pandemic and provide ‘business as usual’ outpatient, diagnostic and elective care to thousands of patients a week.

Covid aside, we know that demand on all services will continue to grow and we need to evolve our ways of working to more digitally-enabled, patient-focussed, efficient methods. Implementing the new operating model, such as the creation of more services in the community ‘closer to home’ and enabling patients to manage their own care through the greater use of technology is key.

Suzanne Rankin
Chief Executive

This week I’m going to focus on something other than our Covid response and the Pandemic – not because this is not important or because I’m not aware of the impacts on Team ASPH or the huge effort and continuing hard work of everyone, but because, despite all we do, we have to pay attention to other important aspects of work together and there is nothing more important than safety – safety for patients and the team.

One of the things I have come to understand is a key safety challenge for us as a provider of healthcare and employer in the 21st century is cyber security.

I have learned that much like other aspects of safety people are really important and “human factors” is a big cause of cyber security breaches and for us that is a patient and team safety issue and we need to address it with the same level of enthusiasm and rigour.