NHS Tayside Assurance and Advisory Group: staging report of findings and recommendations

8. Summary of Recommendations

Actions for the NHS Tayside Senior Executive Team

1. We recommend that NHS Tayside should take urgent and robust action in order to maximise the likelihood of achieving the planned in-year savings and delivery of NHS Tayside's projected financial outturn for 2017/18.

Detailed action plans must have support from key stakeholders and include anticipated financial impact, identified timetables and milestones. There should be clear trigger points for escalation to ensure swift action when delivery is found to be at risk.

2. Over the next three months, NHS Tayside should subject its financial planning framework to rigorous and comprehensive review. This should help to ensure that projections and targets for future years are based on a thorough service by service understanding of cost drivers, risks and opportunities.

3. Over the next six months , NHS Tayside should continue to work with its partners to agree the content and a realistic timeline for completion of the Integrated Clinical Strategy, already in progress. We would expect that the completed Integrated Clinical Strategy would set out a comprehensive and evidence based case for transformational change. This would build upon the HSCPs' strategic plans for social care, primary healthcare and unscheduled hospital care, taking account of public health imperatives. It should provide a clear strategic direction for acute and community healthcare in Tayside, including the development of Regional Plans.

The Integrated Clinical Strategy should take full account of present and future challenges, including those set out in the National Clinical Strategy, Realistic Medicine and the Health and Social Care Delivery Plan. It should provide concrete and detailed options for long term strategic positioning of NHS Tayside's role within a local and regional setting. We would encourage NHS Tayside to accelerate its work together with HSCPs, Local Authorities, the Third Sector, Universities and other partners.

4. NHS Tayside should undertake an early and comprehensive review of staffing levels across all services and sites, including those delegated to or utilised by HSCPs. ^[31] This review should aim to clarify key drivers of NHS Tayside's workforce levels compared to peer Boards and to identify safe options for bringing redesigned services and sites within available resources.

5. In relation to service development, the clear focus on optimal drug prescribing and wastage minimisation should continue unabated.

6. Further and appropriate delegation of decision-making to managers and staff at operational level is required in order to ensure that executive director level capacity is released for strategic development and transformation of services.

Actions for the NHS Tayside Board

7. In order to continue to ensure safe and effective services for the people of Tayside in a challenging and changing environment, the Board must ensure early, meaningful and sustained engagement in partnership with its staff, its stakeholders and moreover the public and political representatives.

8. The Board should build on current restructuring of the senior executive team and recruitment of non-executive members, addressing skill-mix gaps, particularly for effective strategic planning and oversight. It should maximise opportunities for induction and development of non-executive members to ensure robust and effective governance and scrutiny of the executive function of the Board.

9. The Board should ensure that the actions (Actions 1-6) recommended for the senior executive team are rigorously scrutinised and governed to ensure effective and timely delivery. Restructuring of its financial framework control systems must ensure that budgetary control is assured for all its functions (see Action 2 above). In particular, leadership and continuous scrutiny of a very high order will be required for all aspects of strategic planning to deliver sustainable transformation over the next five years.

10. The Board must continue to foster and enable leadership development at all levels. As NHS Tayside moves forward, strong clinical leadership will be essential to realise the ambitions of the Chief Medical Officer's Report on Realistic Medicine and the National Clinical Strategy.

Actions for Scottish Government

11. The Scottish Government should ensure that necessary skills, expertise and support are swiftly made available for NHS Tayside in order to address its significant and longstanding challenges. While assisting the delivery of planned short term in-year savings and projected financial outturn for 2017/18, this support should primarily focus on delivering effective transformational change, including an in-depth comprehensive review of existing plans to return NHS Tayside to sustainable financial balance.

12. Implementation of the recommendations in this report should be closely monitored, in order to realise timely and sustainable transformational change in Tayside.

13. In light of our findings, the Scottish Government should consider the potential impact on NHS Tayside of being required to repay the £33.2m of accumulated financial support which is still outstanding and note the potential need to provide further financial support in future years.

14. Learning opportunities arising from the experience of NHS Tayside should be assimilated for the wider benefit of NHS Scotland. This includes the role and contribution of national services support, on the basis of a 'Once for Scotland' approach - as outlined in the recent Health and Social Care Delivery Plan ^[32] (see also Appendix 2).