The 12 Days of ChristMES

This year, in lieu of Christmas cards MES have created our very own video carol. We had great fun making the video, and a big thanks goes out to Rob and Simon from the membership services team for putting it together. Everyone at MES would like to wish everyone watching a very merry Christmas and a happy new year!

 

A Very MES Christmas

Coming Soon - the MES Christmas video...

Digital Engagement in the NHS

As we heard in the Chancellor’s autumn statement toParliament earlier this week, austerity clearly isn’t going away anytime soonand budgets across all government departments will remain stretched for theforeseeable future. Yet within the NHS there is still a need to engage with thepublic and that work isn’t free. So in an environment where budgets are beingreduced Trusts need to look at new methods of engagement that are more costeffective. Digital engagement (using a range of digital channels to create aconversation) is one of the ways this can be achieved. As well as the potentialfinancial benefits, a possibly far more important reason for greater use ofdigital engagement is that it allows the NHS to engage with a much wider poolof the population. Traditional methods of engagement can only work so far;digital engagement allows Trusts to reach out to those normally excluded andhear from a wider sector of the public, patients and service users.

Social Media

While social media is becoming increasingly common in theprivate sector, the public sector has been a little slow to catch up. And whilemost NHS organisations have some form of social media presence, it’s not alwaysused in the most effective way. Research conducted by Pew has found that as ofAugust 2012 69% of adults with an internet connection used social media – withFacebook being the most popular. The figures for young people are much higher.As a result it seems obvious that the NHS should be using social media as a keypart of its engagement work with the public, especially when it comes to youngpeople.

At MES we’re trying to make it easier for Trust’s to usesocial media (in this case Twitter and Facebook) by integrating them directlyinto our membership database. So as well as recording traditional communicationmethods they can now record members’ social media contacts. With thisinformation they can then directly communicate with their members via these twosocial networks. Whether it’s updating their Facebook status or tweeting attheir members, it takes just a matter of seconds to use the tools we’ve builtto start the conversation.

Email

But of course digital engagement is not just about socialmedia. Trusts have traditionally sent out newsletters to their members on aquarterly basis and this is a great way of keeping them up-to-date on recentdevelopments. However it can be very costly, especially for the larger Trustswhere their membership can be over 20,000. So many Trusts are moving towards email distribution, or hosting thenewsletter online.  If Trusts are unsureabout uploading a standard PDF to their website there are plenty of servicesavailable (such as scribd.com) where a digital version of a newsletter can becreated that makes the online reading experience much more satisfying.

 

Whichever channels the NHS ends up using, digitalengagement needs to form a central element of how the health servicecommunicates and engages with the wider public over the next few years.

Seasonal Membership Recruitment

 

As we head well and truly into the Christmas period, we are seeing more and more members of the public signing up to become members of Foundation Trusts. This week MES has been working alongside the South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust and the Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent Partnership NHS trust with brand new members getting involved from Bristol to Tamworth!

Top 5 tips for delivering great training

I’m Ben Weller, Project Manager and Head of Training Services at MES. I have been delivering bespoke training services for elected representatives for over three years now and wanted to share some of the principles I use to develop our programmes.

1. You are providing more than a training service, you are delivering a set of feelings
When creating a bespoke training programme, I usually find that an important part of the service I am actually being asked to deliver is a set of feelings for the representatives and the commissioner. For the representatives, it is a feeling of clarity, confidence, inspiration; a belief in the role and its purpose. For the commissioner, it is the assurance they have done the right thing by giving the representatives the best possible start. After all, the quality of the training will directly affect how the representatives feel about their role - a positive start is essential – and the power of this should not be under-estimated.

Happy Thanksgiving

Over the past year, the MES team has become more international, with members joining us from New Zealand, Sweden and the United States. In the spirit of honouring and sharing the cultures within our international contingent, today we have celebrated a slightly belated Thanksgiving. While we spent the afternoon devouring pumpkin pie – a traditional Thanksgiving dessert to accompany a dinner of turkey, cranberry sauce, gravy and stuffing – we also called upon our American colleague Mallory to share some thoughts on what this holiday is all about.

There are many origin stories of how the Thanksgiving holiday came into being, and debate as to how realistic some conceptions are of a grand feast where the early settlers and Native Americans came together to eat, share and give thanks for the season’s harvest. Regardless of what may or may not have happened several hundred years ago, the underlying theme of sharing and togetherness persists. Thanksgiving is a time to sit down for a meal with loved ones without the frenzy of gift giving and receiving, and reflect upon the things we already have to be thankful for over the past year.

NHS Alliance

MES together with some of our colleagues at ERS hosted a workshop earlier today at the NHS Alliance conference.  Paul, together with Luke at ERS ran a session on Accountability, Engagement & Governance in the NHS.  We were recording the session so if you weren't able to make it to the actual event you can see the full discussion.



Video streaming by Ustream

Sharing Best Practice of NHS Membership Engagement

Engagement: it can be hard to define and tricky to measure.

by Ben Weller

So what happens when you invite 29 people into one room in Manchester for a day, throw in a little caffeine, some background music, and ask them to solve these and other problems?

...The “NHS Membership Engagement Network, North West”, of course, or, as it has become known to the Twitterati among you, #NHSNW

NHS Membership Engagement Network

Today MES, together with Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, has been hosting the first ever meeting of the NHS Membership Engagement Network in the North West.  The meeting brought together NHS staff from all over the region to share best practice on engaging members, running consultations and governor engagement.

There's been plenty of lively discussion, and lots of great ideas.  If you're on Twitter you can have a look at all the day's events by following the #nhsnw hashtag

MES Strategy Day - Part 2

Last week the MES team had its annual strategy day.  It was a chance to get the team out of the office, to provide a platform for all to have a say about what changes are needed and what our focus should be in the coming year. It was also about spending some time with each other without phones going, emails buzzing (do emails buzz?) or managers hassling!

So my core topics this year were QUALITY and EDUCATION. 

MES Strategy Day in the Cotswolds - Part 1

The MES team spent a few days out of London last week for our annual Strategy Day.  We spent the day planning the next twelve months and doing some team bonding - this year orienteering in the Cotswolds.  We had a great time and we've got some exciting plans for the year ahead.  Come back on Friday to hear more.

FTN Conference Round Up

Last week members of MES and our parent company Electoral Reform Services travelled up to Liverpool to exhibit at the Foundation Trust Network Annual Conference and Exhibition.

The conference itself saw the introduction of Chris Hopson as new chief executive of the FTN and everyone at MES would like to take this opportunity to say a big welcome.
Conferences are usually a great time to spend bit of time away from the office with colleagues, getting a bit of perspective and catching up on the latest news.

One of the big take home messages for us this year was around the remaining provider Trusts and what the future holds for them. We had heard suggestion at the conference that only as few as 35-40 of the remaining aspirant Trusts can expect to be authorised. With the recent anouncement that the CCG deemed Cambridgeshire Community Services as unviable, it appears that crunch time for providers may be here at last.

At MES we have always asked the question 'how does this affect the member, the public and the patient?'. With the onset of more murders and executions (mergers and acquisitions) what happens to the patient's relationship with the outgoing Trust? Communication and involvement in the process can often lead to an even higher level of engagement, and in some intances can even halt the mereger altogther. When there is strong public connection to an organisation, it's a lot harder to simply remove it.

When not debating NHS engagement matters, MES and ERS staff had time to explore a little of Liverpool, grab some great asian food at Tokyou and even cook breakfast together. Getting into the swing of all things Merseyside we even found time to create some alternative Beatles songs - 'while my FT database gently beeps' being a personal favourite!

Ego[stat]istical fact of the day

A few weeks ago we talked about the problem of dodgy data and the need for ‘election-ready data’, well we’re taking another look at the issue today but from a slightly quirkier angle.

Data plays a vital role in any membership organisation, the ability to effectively communicate and engage with your members relies in large part on the quality of your data.  For NHS Foundation Trusts data quality becomes even more important to be able to fulfil the reporting requirements of Monitor.  Without accurate demographic information (age, gender, ethnicity) Trusts can’t provide the data that Monitor require every year.

At MES we currently hold over 1,250,000 individual records for our clients and that figure is continually growing. Because we recognise the importance of data quality we regularly cleanse it making sure to remove any duplicates, ensure the accuracy of postal addresses and remove any deceased members.  Not only does this make reporting much easier, but it also makes mailings much more cost effective as you don’t include members who no longer live at the address you hold.


Through this data cleansing process we've come to understand a few quirks that come with any set of individual records. The most interesting of which is the surprisingly high number of people who marry someone with a similar name or the same first initial.  The number of Pauls married to Paula’s, or Sarah’s married to Steve’s is always a surprise.  At first we just thought it was one of those odd facts of life that didn't really have an explanation.

But last week we found out that the trend we were seeing actually has a psychological reasoning.  A number of studies have identified something called the name-letter effect, where individuals are said to prefer letters that appear in their own name and numbers that appear in their date of birth.  You can even test this yourself – I asked five of the MES team what their favourite number was and three all gave numbers that feature in their Date of Birth.  This name-letter effect is reinforced by a second idea called implicit egotism where people are attracted to people, places and situations that reflect on themselves and this is often cited as the reason that people are attracted to others with similar names. 

So next time you’re going through your membership list have a quick look and see how many of your members have got similar names, you might be pleasantly surprised.

Sgt Peppers Foundation Trust Conference Stand

Yesterday, staffers from MES and ERS travelled up to Liverpool ‘on a magical mystery tour’ for the Foundation Trust Network Annual Conference. It has been good to ‘come together’ to ‘HELP!’ our database clients with latest additions to the system. Following feedback from this year’s user-group we are proud to be launching version 6 of our NHS Membership Database, here at MES we have always had the attitude of ‘we can work it out’.  Its great to have a ‘day in the life’ to catch up with faces old and new. 'We are the egg men.'

Goodbye Rhodri

A note of sadness.  Our great colleague and friend Rhodri leaves us today – after nearly 5 years with MES.  He has been a brilliant colleague, champion and true ambassador for us and I wish him lots of luck.  You will be gone, but not forgotten - goodbyeeeeee!

Foundation Trusts: Their contribution to the engagement debate… and science!

Next week is the annual NHS Foundation Trust Network conference, now in its 5^th year. This year it’s a 2-day event – evidence of the sector’s growth and development, and of course the huge change going on in the NHS right now. As ever, MES and its parent company ERS will be there chatting to clients, putting our feelers out and keeping our ears to the ground.

In advance of that, today we’re launching our publication about the sector’s impact on engagement.  In 2012, it is difficult to get through the day without seeing or hearing a news story, a government initiative being launched or a campaign commencing that talks about the importance to engage with us all.  We should all be engaging – being consulted, taking part, being listened to, no decision made about us without us and so on.

Consultation Translation

Pushto, Tamil, Tigrinya, Swahilli, Somali, Punjabi, Mandarin, Hindi, Gujarati, French, Farsi, Bengali. The Shaping a Healthier Future consultation summary document has been translated into all of these languages.

MES worked alongside the London Communications Agency to create the entire suite of consultation materials for NHS North West London's service reconfiguration consultation.



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Delivering healthcare through collaboration – a view from the South (of the Equator)

Changes in commissioning health care services

The new changes to England’s health care structure (Health & Social Care Act 2012) will put clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) in charge of commissioning healthcare services. This will also mean that other non-NHS organisations (such as third sector organisations) will be able to apply for funding to provide health care services. This creates new and innovative opportunities for NHS trusts to work in collaboration with charities and other third sector organisations.

CCG Practice Team Engagement – Where to Begin?

Wave 1 Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs)  are on the cusp of authorisation. However this is not the end, this is not even the end of the beginning!

Leading up to this momentous occasion, CCGs have not been sitting idly around. There has been a charge to ensure that GP’s, Nurses, Practice Managers and Receptionists are on-board and know how to contribute.

In our work alongside emerging CCGs, so far, the biggest challenge has been simply to get through to people. In the run up to authorisation there is a daily typhoon of emails, letters, bulletins and more emails, and not a lifejacket in sight!

Then there is the daily business of running a practice. We have found that practice teams are overwhelmed by data and deadline, trying to speak to them about something which is beyond a ‘must do’ is very hard, but not impossible. Our aim has been to frame involvement in commissioning in a way that doesn’t demand more time. Sounds simple when written down, in reality this is quite a tough nut to crack.

Solving the problem of dodgy data

In 4 weeks, MES launches v6 of its Membership Database system for Foundation Trusts.  Preparing to roll it out to our 100+ clients has inevitably got me thinking about v1, and the start of it all. 

Back in 2006 when we started spec’ing it out and development began, we were approaching the project from a very different perspective.

Our USP for the system was that we were coming at it from an electoral point of view, not a purely technical perspective.  The technicalities and functional capabilities were of course important, and needed to be better than elsewhere.  However, we were not a software house focused just on the jazzy features.

Foundation Trust Membership – it’s all a blur!

So far, 2012 has been the year of growing Foundation Trust memberships.  Our membership services team can attest to this.

So far, we have recruited around 40,000 members on behalf of our Foundation Trust clients.  Even with the drop dead date for Foundation Trust authorisation abandoned (to some degree) MES are seeing an ever increasing number of aspirant and authorised Foundation Trusts looking to recruit members to share in their journey.

Engagement in the Health Sector

This week’s blog takes a look at something very dear to our hearts at MES, public and patient engagement in the NHS.

As we draw into the hopefully anticipated ‘indian summer’ of 2012 I have been reflecting upon the people we’ve met, the conferences attended and the clients we have worked alongside so far this year.
 

Following the assent of the Health and Social Care Bill in March the precedent for patient and public involvement has never been greater. What’s more it has been set out as a whole domain (2) for Clinical Commissioning Groups to get to grips with. But without the rigid measures for engagement that are laid out for Foundation Trusts to guide them, many CCGS are wondering what effective engagement actually feels like.

The Engagement Calendar

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The blog is a day late this week.  Sorry to all the many readers who were left with nothing to do last night.  Its unacceptable and will not happen again.

Unless of course I find a suitable excuse – which this week was because I managed to get to the Paralympics at the stadium on Friday morning! Yeeeay!  It was great and all the things I read about it being inspirational, moving, fantastic for ‘normalising’ disability… its all true.  Thanks to my 10 year old for winning the tickets.

The Javelin throwers warming up:  they broke the WR 3 times!

Integrity

So we’re at the end of August – virtually the end of summer.  Did you blink? Yes we did have a few moments of sun though not where you are.  We’ll soon be into Autumn, conferences, conkers, bbc vs itv ‘home of drama’ hyperbole, deciding when to stop mowing the grass, staff appraisals, an MES 10k run in Sept (www.justgiving.com/teams/MES), working on company strategy for 2013, expanding our team, Christmas …. actually the next few months sound OK.  And to ease us into it we have the Paralympics, which after only a day already look to be the phenomenon and inspiration promised.

So its not a very engagementy thing to talk about but the main thing on my mind this past week has been about integrity (no. 2 in The MES Philosophy). The Lance Armstrong/drug issue has really got to me (if you’re not familiar you can read about it here - The Telegraph – follow the links to other articles too).   

Introducing the MES Blog

Today we're very excited to be launching our new blog with this grand inaugural message.  WELCOME!

We started tweeting this week too.  Social media is about to play a big part in our work here at Membership Engagement Services.  But first....

What is MES?  We're essentially a communications company with a particular focus on membership organisations.  We help our clients to link up and communicate better with their members, stakeholders, staff and local communities.  Lots of our clients are NHS Trusts but we work for other membership organisations too - trade unions, associations, institutes and corporate bodies.  We help with strategy, advice, and practical project delivery too; I never had much time for consultancies that offer the general advice, some of it a little obvious at that, without the tangible delivery too.

You can read our company philosophy here.

We're a subsidiary company of Electoral Reform Services - their focus being the impartial, expert and independent management of elections and ballots.

And what of this blog?  It will be a commentary, a resource and perhaps even a vaguely entertaining read about engagement.  We see the word bandied around willy nilly, organisations are encouraged to engage with us, Parliamentary Acts are passed that refer to public engagement, politicians speak of localism, community power and the big society ... although that particular phrase has quietened down somewhat this past 12 months or so.  And of course we have the word in our company name.

And now?  We'll be starting weekly for now.  More of the MES team will be contributing as time goes on.

So long for now.