Chief executive update

March 2026

Welcome to this month's regular update from Team BCHC, which comes just a couple of weeks from the end of the financial year. And as the end of 2025/6 approaches, I'm pleased to report that BCHC remains broadly on track to deliver many of the objectives in our annual plan.

Before going any further, however, can I first offer my best wishes to everyone who is marking the holy month of Ramadan or the festival of Lent, leading up to Easter. I'm told such a precise alignment of those two important events only occurs every 30 years or so and we recognise that this is a special time of year for many in our teams and in the communities we serve.

 

  2025/6 and Beyond

There are still a few important areas in which we need to keep our focus through the rest of March; but being in a position to deliver our 2025/26 plan, including financial break-even, is a great achievement, given all the challenges we have faced throughout the year. I'd like to thank colleagues across the Trust for all they've done to get us to this point. 

Looking further ahead, we are now finalising our Medium-Term Plan, which covers the next three to five years. Central to that is a focus on how we progress our strategic objectives , while tackling those issues where we know we have room to improve.

The plan reflects BCHC's current position, including pioneering integrated care models and strong partnerships with system health, care, and partners in the voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise sector. Challenges we are committed to addressing include long waiting times in some areas - particularly in children and young people's neurodevelopmental pathways, where we have started implementation of an improvement plan and aim to increase service capacity and redesign our pathways to a more “needs-led” rather than simply diagnosis-driven approach. 

As part of our commitment to ensuring we deliver the Medium-Term Plan successfully, we have recently launched a programme involving colleagues in all areas to look at the shape of our future operating model, with the first design groups having taken place in recent weeks. This programme aims to ensure that we are the right size and shape as an organisation to deliver our plan and especially that we can integrate care effectively in neighbourhoods and localities both within BCHC and with our system partners. The Future Operating Model programme will be a major plank of our approach to improvement in 2026.

Integrated Care

Our work to become a more digitally enabled organisation continues. Having launched our patient portal in January, we have seen a larger than expected initial uptake from our patients. We have also recently gone live with an electronic prescribing system for prescribers in our learning disabilities division. Roll-out of this system to other services will continue over the months to come. We continue to work with GPs to support their sign-up to the system for data-sharing to support integrated neighbourhood teams.

The five Birmingham locality hubs were launched as part of our winter plan . There are now 12 “live” integrated neighbourhood teams (INTs) with a further four planned before the end of March. We aim to have all 30 or more operating by the end of 2026/27.

We have also continued the next phase of citywide intermediate care development, including preparing our inpatient centres (Anne Marie Howes in Sheldon and The Perry Trees Centre in Kingstanding) for a new model of care, transitioning out of our community unit at Good Hope Hospital and transferring the care previously provided at the Norman Power Centre to Moseley Hall Hospital.

Meanwhile our team in the east locality, who are part of the National Neighbourhood Health Implementation Programme , are developing plans for a frailty hub supporting people with long-term conditions at Hodge Hill Health Centre. This aligns to work already underway to re-develop Sutton Cottage as a local hub for the care of older people . Capital bids have also been submitted to further develop neighbourhood health centres as part of the neighbourhood health infrastructure development process.

 

10 Years of BCHC Charity

This month marks the 10^th birthday of our BCHC Charity . During its first decade, the Charity has helped many colleagues and patients and their families. More than £4 million has been raised by the Charity team, which all goes towards those extras which can improve life for patients and colleagues.

From toys to support occupational therapy assessments for children to improvement to gardens at inpatient facilities; from winter wellbeing bags for vulnerable patients to bereavement support items, BCHC Charity is making a real difference week in and week out - thank you to all who have played a part in the BCHC Charity's successful first 10 years.

 

Retirement wishes

Finally this month, I would like to recognise the contribution that David Holmes has made during 14 years at BCHC, first as Director of HR and most recently as Chief People Officer. As David looks forward to retirement at the end of this month. I would like to take the opportunity to thank him sincerely for many years of dedicated service and wish him, on behalf of everyone at BCHC, all the very best.