Chief executive update

November 2025

Welcome to another regular update from Team BCHC. 

I would like to begin this message by congratulating all the winners and finalists recognised last week at our Values in Practice (VIP) Awards presentation evening .

The awards are a celebration of the great work our colleagues deliver day after day across our organisation, with so many examples of great care and inspiring actions and achievements all bringing our values to life in the way we care for our patients and support our colleagues.

These stories highlight the very best of us and illustrate what people across our teams and services do day in, day out to bring our shared values to life. Hearing the descriptions of that work, as described by colleagues and patients, makes me very proud of the care and commitment shown by those within our team.

Winter pressures

It is beginning to feel well and truly that winter is here and I'm very grateful to colleagues for all they are doing to keep patients and each other safe - in particular, teams working in our Adult Community Services and Adults and Specialist Rehabilitation divisions for maintaining focus on responding to rising urgent and emergency care pressures. This is largely due to an earlier than usual rise in flu cases - a reminder of the importance of vaccination. Our staff vaccination campaign is well underway.  Our immunisation nurses are also delivering flu vaccination sessions in Birmingham schools. Uptake is currently lower than we would like and we expect that our move to the national system for e-consent for parents in December will make it easier for those who do want their children to have this vaccination. 

The health and social care system in Birmingham and Solihull is already experiencing significantly increased demand for emergency care, affecting Heartlands Hospital in particular. In line with our winter plan, we have launched care co-ordination centres in all five localities across Birmingham, focussing on the east of the city in particular.

Working with social care, we have seen some improvement in rate of discharges from our inpatient beds over the autumn months. November is a key month for delivering many of the actions in the winter plan, including the launch of an expanded single point of access co-ordinating access to alternatives to acute care.

Financial position and service developments

As we move into the second half of the financial year, it is encouraging that our steady financial recovery continues. We still face significant risks, including temporary staffing expenditure through winter and potential costs of reducing waiting times but, at this stage, we are on track to deliver our financial recovery plan in March.

Almost all those patients currently waiting longest for an initial appointment are children and families waiting for autism and ADHD assessments. We continue to work on a package of support for those families and aim to have a proposal this month for increasing assessment capacity so that we can begin reducing the longest waiting times in 2026/27.

The roll-out of a further 11 integrated neighbourhood teams continues - building capacity is key to making a positive and lasting impact on the local health and care system, particularly alleviating the pressure on acute services. In East Birmingham, we hope our participation in the National Neighbourhood Health Implementation Programme (NNHIP) will enable us to learn from the other first wave sites. Work continues with our partners to agree future scope and priorities for the Community Care Collaborative in light of national policy developments, particularly delivering the vision of a “neighbourhood health”.

As ever, a lot going on. I hope you have found this update useful. If you would like to get in touch, please email me on richard.kirby@nhs.net , I'd be very happy to hear from you.

Best wishes,
Richard