18 february 2012, baron has left the building

With my time helping run trafford's hospitals at an end, I have now joined the board of a new venture, bridgewater. The difference about this particular nhs hospital trust, is that it has no hospitals - it is a "community" trust. Basically, we try to do what it says on the tin: improving health and wellbeing in the various populations we serve. In passing, this kind of care (with a big dollop of generalisation) is safer, as hospitals are the place patients are most likely to contract illness, more popular, as people generally want treating at home or close to it and cheaper, as it has much less expensive fixed costs. The latter is key in a world where the health service needs to save twenty billion pounds even before any actual cuts come through. The key is providing services away from a hospital setting where it is possible to do so, reducing hospital stays, and, upstream, increasing prevention and self care, including through telehealth, which the trust is actually doing not just talking about. It is also better orientated to be patient-centric rather than service-centric, so more amenable to innovations coming down the track like personal budgets. It's all a big new challenge for me, the sort of thing I thrive on, and hopefully cutting edge in a brave new world.