Workshops and Seminars 2016-17
The following Management in Medicine workshops and seminars were held at Green Templeton College in the 2016-17 academic year.
The past, present and future of the NHS
Monday 19 September 2016, 18:45
Speaker: Professor Robert Arnott, Green Templeton College Common Room Member. He was previously NHS Senior Manager, Sub-Dean of the University of Birmingham Medical School, and Director of the Birmingham Medical Institute.
The NHS is one of the world’s largest organisations, comparable to the People’s Liberation Army of China, the Indian Railways and Wal-Mart. Understanding how this vast conglomerate came into being and how it works today is important for anyone interested in its leadership and management. This seminar explored participants’ understanding of the current structure of the organisation and looked at how it came into being, how it was originally managed and operated and the series of significant structural changes that has been an important characteristic of its sixty-seven year history. It also explored the innumerable political and financial challenges currently facing the NHS.
Financial skills for healthcare
Saturday 22 October 2016, 9:30
Speaker: Dominic Tkaczyk, a senior financial professional with over 40 years practical experience of finance in the NHS.
Successful managers must plan the resources needed to carry out any particular task or function and measure how those resources are used. Accounting is the discipline, developed over centuries, that helps managers to measure resource allocation and use. It provides a standard language for reporting financial performance and is primarily a way of ‘keeping score’.
An understanding of NHS finance and accounting, including how hospital budgets are constructed, how activity is measured and how to put together a business case for a new activity is an invaluable skill for any manager. In this workshop, Dominic Tkaczyk described how NHS organisations report their financial position, explained how ‘Service Level’ accounting works and illustrated how to put together a business case. Working in small groups, participants got hands-on experience in these activities.
Dominic has been Finance Director at a range of NHS organisations including acute trusts, community trusts, and commissioning organisations. He is familiar with the financial policies, practices and needs in Trusts as diverse as a large London Teaching Hospital and a Clinical Commissioning Group. Dominic has also had wider management experience having managed IT, Estates and Performance Management directorates. He has also acted as Chief Executive of an Acute Trust. For the last 18 years he has run his own consultancy organisation providing interim financial management to NHS organisations, bringing a wealth of experience and insight to his clients. He also lectures on NHS finance at Oxford Brookes University. Dominic has now retired from interim work and is now concentrating on executive coaching.
The GP leader of the future: missions impossible?
Monday 21 November 2016, 18:45
View lecture slides for ‘The GP leader of the future’ (PDF)
Speaker: Professor Judith Smith, Director of the Health Services Management Centre, University of Birmingham.
In this lecture, Professor Judith Smith drew on over 20 years of research and development work in and alongside primary care to examine the changing nature of leadership and management in this sector. She considered the ways in which general practitioners (GPs) have traditionally assumed leadership roles within local practices, and also in wider representative or collective primary care organisations, as commissioners, providers, politicians, researchers and educators.
Judith drew on this analysis to set out what she considers to be the primary care leadership requirement for the future in the NHS, drawing on both UK and international research into new models of primary and integrated care organisation. As part of this, Judith addressed the issue of how the NHS needs to enable a more diverse clinical and leadership community. She concluded by suggesting what her overall analysis means for those in primary care aspiring to take on leadership roles in the future, including how they might choose to shape their career paths and development plans, and what wider support and experience they will need.
Judith is a widely published health services researcher and policy analyst. She took up the post of Director of the Health Services Management Centre and Professor of Health Policy and Management at the University of Birmingham on 1 June 2015. This followed six years spent as Director of Policy at the Nuffield Trust, an independent charitable research foundation in London. Judith’s main research interests are: health commissioning and purchasing; the organisation and management of primary care; long-term conditions and integrated care; the evaluation of health care organisation; and health care management and culture.
Launch of the Management in Medicine Shadowing Programme
Monday 12 December 2016, 18:45
Speaker: Dr Siân Rees
The shadowing element of the Green Templeton College Management in Medicine Programme provides medical students, doctors in training in the Thames Valley area, postgraduate students and others with an interest in healthcare management, with an opportunity to shadow a senior manager in healthcare, or social services for approximately two half-days. The purpose of the shadowing is to give trainee doctors an insight into the activities of managers, how they go about them and the issues on which they work.
This single launch event was held for potential shadows to be briefed on the Shadowing Programme and hear from previous shadows about their experiences and from Dr Siân Rees, Director of Patient and Public Involvement, Engagement and Experience, Oxford Academic Health Science Network and a manager on the programme who spoke about her experience from a manager’s perspective. At this event, potential shadows were given a list of all the participating managers, their job title, a sentence describing what the shadowing would involve and where it will take place.
Potential shadows were then invited to apply, stating their preferences for the shadowing placement based on the information provided and their ability to get to the location of the shadowing. They had to provide a short bio for the manager and give a firm commitment to complete the programme and to provide a report on completion.
The Shadowing Programme was open to all medical trainees, doctors in training, and postgraduate students with an interest in healthcare and healthcare management related subjects. The demand for shadowing opportunities has historically exceeded the number of managers who have agreed to take part so priority was given to those who missed out on a manager last year, those who attended this launch event, Green Templeton College students and alumni, and doctors training in the Thames Valley area.
An update from the USA: fixing Obamacare: a ‘why’ and ‘how to’ guide for the new President and Congress
Thursday 15 December 2016, 18:00
Speaker: Professor Timothy Hoff, Visiting Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College. He is Professor of Management, Healthcare Systems, and Health Policy, Patrick F. and Helen C. Walsh Professor, D’Amore-McKim School of Business, School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, Northeastern University.
This seminar examined the emerging challenges the Affordable Care Act or “Obamacare” faces in its quest to transform the U.S. healthcare system and insure all citizens. While the health reform law has enabled millions of previously uninsured citizens to gain health care coverage, it has done less to evolve the U.S. health care marketplace into one that is patient-centric, affordable for patients, and which does not rely on for-profit thinking or market-based approaches to achieve needed innovation in care delivery. Current problems related to healthcare access, price inflation, and consumer choice were discussed and analyzed. Aspects of the current U.S. social, political, and economic contexts exacerbating these problems were presented. Specific policy changes and managerial interventions to alleviate the law’s unintended consequences, as well as correct its explicit flaws as a piece of legislation, were discussed.
Making service improvements in healthcare
Saturday 11 February 2017, 09:30
Speakers:
- Dr Keith Ruddle, Emeritus Fellow of Green Templeton College, Associate Fellow at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.
- Catherine Stoddart, Chief Nurse from the OUH and previously Chief Nurse and Midwifery Officer for Western Australia.
This highly interactive workshop focused on implementing change in the clinical environment. It was led by Dr Keith Ruddle, who has both practical and academic experience of managing change in large organizations including the NHS. The workshop aimed to take ideas from the participants’ own experience of working in, and experiencing, health services – and explore how they might be implemented in practice. Keith was joined by Catherine Stoddart, who provided some context for current and future service improvement in the NHS and also shared personal lessons learnt from her own experience sponsoring service change initiatives at the Trust and elsewhere. Some key projects from previous similar Management in Medicine workshops have been taken forward successfully for implementation in the NHS and elsewhere.
Putting evidence-based innovation into practice: what can we learn from medical communications from the pharmaceutical industry?
Monday 13 March 2017, 18:45
Speakers:
- Dr Richard White, Oxford PharmaGenesis.
- Dr Chris Winchester, Oxford PharmaGenesis.
Adoption of evidence-based innovation by health systems around the world has the potential to extend and improve patients’ lives, save healthcare costs and incentivize further innovation. Yet it often takes ten years or more for evidence to change everyday clinical practice. What can be learned from the pharmaceutical industry’s approach to facilitating adoption of evidence-based innovation? This seminar explored the wide range of medical communications channels that can be used to reach increasingly diverse stakeholders, and how they are changing.
Richard and Chris are Directors of Oxford PharmaGenesis, a global health and science communications consultancy headquartered in Oxford. They are also members of the Green Templeton College Common Room.
An update from the USA: the growing diminishment of the doctor in healthcare delivery
Monday 24 April 2017, 18:00
Speaker:
- Professor Timothy Hoff, Visiting Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College. He is Professor of Management, Healthcare Systems, and Health Policy, Patrick F. and Helen C. Walsh Professor, D’Amore-McKim School of Business, School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, Northeastern University.
Modern scientific management techniques now being used in U.S. health care delivery, as well as physician workforce shortages, the drive for greater efficiency and improved profit margins in health organizations, and intense patient access demands are conspiring to diminish the physician’s role in patient care broadly defined. A very near future with health care delivery being much less physician-centric, particularly in primary care, is likely. This talk described the system developments driving a diminished role for the physician; predicted in what delivery sectors such diminishment will occur most profoundly; and offered potential factors which might intervene to stem this trend. In addition, the likelihood of physician role diminishment in non-market based delivery systems like the United Kingdom was also discussed.
Politics, philosophy and economics of the workplace in healthcare
Saturday 10 June, 2017, 09:30
View workshop slides for ‘Politics, philosophy and economics of the workplace in healthcare (PDF)
Speaker: John Drew, Partner in McKinsey’s Healthcare Practice.
This workshop explored:
- Politics: How do organisations really work? How is power built and exercised (e.g. between levels of the organisation and between ‘tribes’)? How to create accountability, and how to recognise and resolve conflict? How to retain focus on the patient in a politicised system?
- Philosophy: Why do we work in healthcare, and what do we expect of it? What are our underlying assumptions about organisations and how and why they function as they do? How do we find greater meaning and motivation in our work? What is our source of identity in all of this?
- Economics: How is performance measured and managed? What is our ‘objective function’ in healthcare; what is ‘value’? How are key decisions framed and made?
The workshop was interactive, with a series of practical exercises, lots of conversations in pairs and small groups, and some tools and skills which are transferable to other situations.
John Drew leads McKinsey’s Healthcare Practice’s work with NHS hospitals. After studying Engineering, Economics and Management at Oxford he went into industry working as a manufacturing engineer, and then joined McKinsey’s Operations Practice. Since then he has worked intensively with hospitals for the last decade, and more recently has established the McKinsey Hospital Institute. In 2005 he wrote an award-winning book on operational improvement called Journey to Lean.
Contact
All enquiries about the Management in Medicine Programme should be addressed to:
Naomi Benson
naomi.benson@gtc.ox.ac.uk
Academic Projects Administrator
Green Templeton College
Woodstock Road
Oxford
OX2 6HG
