Delivering our strategic goals

Our strategic vision and goals

Our vision

Outstanding care, exceptional people, every hour of every day #WeAreEEAST

Our goals

Our vision is underpinned by four goals:

• Be an exceptional place to work, volunteer and learn
• Provide outstanding quality of care and performance
• Be excellent collaborators and innovators as system partners
• Be an environmentally and financially sustainable organisation

Our supporting strategies

• People strategy
• Clinical strategy
• Sustainability strategy

 

Our Strategy, Our People, Our Trust was launched during 2020.

Our aim is to place our patients and colleagues at the heart of everything we do while delivering our vision of ‘outstanding care, exceptional people, every hour of every day.

Last year, EEAST shared a set of commitments against each of our strategic goals that we aimed to achieve over the last year.

The following tables show what we have delivered over the previous 12 months, and what we plan to achieve in 2023/24.

Provide outstanding quality of care and performance

Our commitment	Delivered in 2022-23	Planned for delivery in 2023-24
Every patient has a predictable, reliable and appropriate pre-hospital experience	Introduction of new clinical safety plan for use during periods of high demand and system pressure. Delivery of statutory/ mandatory training for all staff including the roll out of level 3 multiagency safeguarding training to all registered professionals.	Delivery of statutory/ mandatory training for all staff including the roll out of level 3 multiagency safeguarding training to all registered professionals.
All parts of our patient pathways are effective and provide a seamless care experience	Development of call before you convey services. Introduction of electronic patient records with direct access to child protection information service (CPIS ) and direct electronic referral to 111 providers. Set of advancing practice department	Implementation of local clinical hubs. Development of advancing practice department.

 Be excellent collaborators and innovators as system 

Our commitment	Delivered in 2022-23	Planned for delivery in 2023-24
We lead as the regional provider, collaborating to support effective pathways of care for our patients	EEAST led the development of its regional clinical strategy with a partnership approach, including a face to face clinical strategy partnership event hosted by the University of Suffolk. We initiated and supported a range of blue light partnerships and continue to recruit our community first responders.	Implementing the clinical strategy, again, in partnership, is our ongoing focus. This includes the development of community hubs, call before you convey and further utilisation of access to the stack. EEAST will implement its volunteer delivery plan to promote volunteer insight and impact and make every contact count.
We all work together to improve all of the time	Our dedicated business and partnerships team is geographically aligned to each ICS; we provide additional schemes in each area, focussed on local priorities.	We will continue to work in this local way, sharing learning and good practice from each area. We will continue to support national mandates via local delivery mechanisms, such as mental health joint response vehicles.

 Be an exceptional place to work, volunteer and learn

Our commitment	Delivered in 2022-23	Planned for delivery in 2023-24
Our people feel valued, involved and supported	Developed a new communications and engagement plan. Increased our digital platforms for engaging and communicating with colleagues. Expanded our Freedom to Speak Up team, HR business partners and leadership development teams to provide additional employee support.	Implement first year plan for people strategy in line with NHS People Promise. Local intervention with hot spot areas for high staff turnover / sickness. Focused support from ‘stay with EEAST questionnaire’ findings to reduce regretted attrition. Improve flexible working options for employees. Increase local onboarding support for new starters.
We are all healthy in our work	Trauma incident management practitioners and wellbeing champions in place to support our people. Welfare wagon in place to provide refreshments during hospital handover delays. Provision of Headspace App for mindfulness.	Relaunch of the chaplaincy offering to provide a more diverse model which matches the diversity of our people and communities. Expansion of the welfare wagon to provide better refreshments and additional support by way of councillors, physio chaplains and good Dogs. The service will also be made available to all our people and used for recruitment and brand promotion. Deliver mental health first aider training and mental health awareness training to assist our leaders in caring for their teams and one another.
We are developed so we can be the best version of ourselves	Enhanced clinical progression routes. Expanded non-clinical development pathways. Increased annual time off to complete CPD training. Recruit specialist team to deliver in-house development for all colleagues.	Increase number of career pathways across EEAST. Implement new EDI training programme for all staff. Expand access and range of degree apprenticeships. Transition to new e-learning portal to increase learner experience.
We all own our roles, caring about our teams and place	Increased appraisal completion rates across the Trust by more than 100% in a year. Re-aligned roles and responsibilities in Operational teams via Time to Lead initiative.	Introduce new digital appraisal system to underpin development needs. Undertake organisational structure review of other operational teams to better align resource with delivery.
We lead well, fairly and with confidence. We are also great followers	Introduced new leadership development programme for all managers and leaders. Implemented Time to Lead programme to align core duties and resources. Offered a number of leadership learning circles to promote ongoing CPD.	Embed new leadership development Programme to all managers and leaders. Expand Time to Lead programme to reach other areas of the organisation.

 Be an environmentally and financially sustainable organisation

Our commitment	Delivered in 2022-23	Planned for delivery in 2023-24
We are effective and efficient in our work	During a challenging year with a plan set for a £1m deficit, the Trust achieved a better than planned, break even year end position. The Trust achieved cost improvements across 2022/23 of £5.1m. The Trust developed a clear ‘Fit for the Future’ transformation programme to enable us to improve in the right areas to drive better delivery of our core business for patients and colleagues.	The Trust has set a plan to achieve a break-even financial position for 2023/24. A new, challenging workforce plan has been set in line with a refreshed clinical operating model. Further roll out of make ready services is planned across the Trust to support efficient operational performance. The Trust will continue to implement its ‘Fit for the Future’ transformation plan focussing on operational, people, and process improvements that drive better service delivery.
We are continuously seeking improvement opportunities, learning from insights and our data	Organisational performance improvement plan developed and was focused on ensuring our core business performance data is understood and enables us to plan to improve. The Trust has continued with our data lake technology and is working towards the NHS Making Data Count standards for all reports for both internal and external creation. The Trust was one of the first ambulance services to progressively deploy SPC formats into Board and operational reports to enable improvements into our insights and data to transform the way we work.	The Trust has set a cost improvement programme target at £13.5m for 2023/24. Plans for achievement are underway. The operational performance improvement plan set by the Trust identifies clear areas for financial and productivity improvements. The Trust digital team is working with NHS national and regional partner colleagues to build collaborative environments under the national SDE programme.

We understand our challenges, accept them, and know what is required to build the right foundations to be a successful and high performing organisation. We have a clear forward plan for 2023/24 that recognises where we need to focus our efforts and deliver for our patients and partners. We will continue to deliver our long-term improvement programme, Fit for the Future, ensuring there is clear alignment and oversight of our development areas. Our integrated transformation programme began in 2018 and continues to deliver transformation of operations support and estates.

EEAST is a conscientious partner working across the health and care systems and recognises the importance of joint working with partners to deliver safe and compassionate care for our patients and communities.

In support of the process to develop joint forward plans, EEAST’s engagement with Integrated Care Boards, as a provider partner, is continuing to develop. EEAST has, and will continue to, engage with the development of six joint forward plans for our regional footprint.

EEAST will continue to be engaged in the commitments coming out of the joint forward plans, many of these are derived from existing urgent emergency care plans and actions supporting integrated health and social care pathways, such as frailty. The main areas featured are system flow and hospital handover delays.

The ambulance service, generally, is in a unique position, as we witness some of the most vulnerable patients during times of emergency, with unprecedented access to their home environment. This information, is often not known by any other agency and only uncovered upon our emergency intervention. This paints a picture as to the lived experience of our patients and their families. By sharing this information, we will improve patient outcomes and outcomes through timely intervention and strategies. We will continue to deliver on our health inequality responsibilities outlined in the urgent emergency care plans and ensure that we triangulate our activity through the below proposed ways of influencing health inequalities for the populations we serve.

EEAST will be guided by the below principles:

• Using data to better understand population need.
• Understand experience, barriers and outcomes for specific population groups.
• Putting money into our communities by purchasing locally.
• Creating a workplace environment that supports our people's health and wellbeing.
• Reducing the environmental impact of our activities.
• Reviewing and improving clinical care for vulnerable population groups.
• Understanding and reviewing Trust estate to better support communities.
• Designing and delivering inclusive recruitment processes.

I confirm that this performance report complies with the reporting requirements.

Signed by Tom Abell, Chief Executive

Next page: Accountability report

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