My first meeting of the NHS Lothian Board this morning. Always strange entering a formal business meeting as the "new boy" but I was made to feel welcome and managed to settle into the business without too much fuss. A meeting of the Health Endowment Trust at 8.30am was quickly followed by the Board meeting itself at 9.30. A packed agenda including reports on tackling waiting lists (not without its controversial elements), an update on the Legionnaires outbreak and the rather difficult decision to close the children's ward at St John's for 3 weeks in July, due to a lack of qualified staff. Not a pleasant position to be in but the clinical advice regarding patient safety seemed pretty sound even though colleagues from West Lothian were understandably less than chuffed. All the board papers can be accessed at this NHS Lothian web-site link.
An extremely short lunch break was followed by an informal afternoon session to discuss Integration. Very interesting for me to hear the views on this from the NHS side of the fence. Pretty sure everyone is united in the desire to make services as responsive, efficient and effective as possible but there are an awful lot of issues to be addressed if the process is to be successfully delivered.
Should have been golfing tonight but Mother Nature put paid to that idea. The course was flooded before I even got the clubs out of the locker.
Full Council tomorrow. Not as large an agenda as one might expect for the last meeting before the break but that doesn't necessarily equate to a quick meeting. Right, what time does the football start ?....
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