CEO Today UK Awards 2021

About Len Richards Len Richards is Chief Executive of Cardiff and Vale University Health Board, the most complex regional health system inWales with 14,500 staff and an annual budget of around £1.4 billion. It is made up of nine hospitals (including children’s, mental health, spinal injury and dental specialist hospitals), 73 GP practices and community services serving a population of 500,000 across Cardiff and Vale. Its range of specialist health services serve a wider population across the whole of Wales. Like healthcare organisations around the world, this year Cardiff and Vale University Health Board has responded to the unprecedented challenge of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Steering such a large, complex organisation through this has been one of the most testing times of Len’s career. Under his leadership and through the commitment of the Health Board’s 14,500 staff, the organisation opened Wales’ largest field hospital, was a leader in the UK’s COVID-19 RECOVERY trial and kickstarted a range of innovative projects to ensure services could continue to deliver vital care both now and for future generations. A passion for people Underpinning Len’s leadership is a passion for the people he works with and the com- munities he serves. For the staff of Cardiff and Vale University Health Board, this was evident during the response to the pandemic in the health and wellbeing support that was put in place as they worked in unprecedented conditions. This included the expansion of the employee wellbeing counselling service, the development of new staff facilities includ- ing shower blocks, changing rooms, and Staff Havens, waiving parking restrictions on hospital sites, and 24-hour hot food provision from hos- pital restaurants. Throughout his career, Len has championed equality, and at Cardiff and Vale this means making the Health Board as inclusive an organisation as possible. The organisational values of supporting and protecting staff from intolerance are key in his everyday work and he ensures that this message is echoed throughout the organisation. Len has recently, on behalf of the Health Board, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with The British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (BAPIO) highlighting the organisation’s commitment to continue its support and celebration of its diverse workforce. Len is committed to listening to colleagues from across the organisation and creating the space for them to innovate. The Amplify 2025 programme, which began in 2019 invites colleagues from across the health and care system in Cardiff and Vale to come together to share their ideas about culture and leadership transformation to achieve the goals in the Health Board’s Shaping Our Future Wellbeing Strategy. Through this inclusive engagement, all health and social care staff have the opportunity to be part of the change happening across the Cardiff and Vale health and care system and to shape the future of its culture and leadership for those who matter most: patients. The Health Board’s Shaping Our Future Wellbeing vision is underpinned by a belief that a person’s chance of leading a healthy life should be the same, no matter who they are. The strategy was published in 2015 to achieve joined up care based on ‘home first’ treatment, avoiding harm, waste and variation, empowering people and delivering outcomes that matter to them. Put simply, it’s all about ‘caring for people, keeping people well’ and ensuring that the whole health system works together to do just that with a shared sense of purpose and momentum. Ben Collins, Projects Director for The King’s Fund said: “ Len is clearly a person with huge personal drive and commitment which he puts to the service of staff, patients and the community. It was only when I met staff across the Cardiff and Vale system that I began to understand the impact Len has had. People described an astonishing transformation journey over the last four years, from a system with an ambitious vision, to a system with the culture, tools and infrastructure to put that vision into action. Over the last four years, Cardiff and Vale has started to put in place so many of the building blocks for success that we see in high performing health systems around the world: a movement in favour of change, effective partnerships across services, established approaches to quality improvement amongst others .” An international perspective To achieve this transformation, Len has encouraged the Health Board to look beyond Wales – to learn from and collaborate with the best health systems in the world. Len’s career has spanned leadership roles in the UK, Australia and the Middle East, giving him a global perspective on system-wide learning, collaboration and continuous improvement. As chief executive of Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Len led the development of an innovative service improvement model – the Wirral Excellence in Healthcare System (WEHS) - which captured the imagination of staff and focused on the improvement of quality and safety and the elimination of waste. The Wirral Excellence in Healthcare System is based on the Toyota Production System and was the first of its kind in the UK to partner with Virginia Mason Medical Centre, Seattle USA. Cardiff and Vale’s learning alliance with Canterbury District Health Board, New Zealand demonstrates Len’s international partnership approach. TheHealthBoard is an early adopter of the HealthPathways platform which gives clinicians instant access to care pathways and referral information to make sure that patients are offered the right care at the right time, and referred to specialists in secondary care settings only when appropriate thereby reducing variation on the patient journey from community to hospital- based care. HealthPathways improves patient experience, can ease pressure on hospital sites and ensure that the core value of the Shaping 27 CEO TODAY UNITED KINGDOM AWARDS 2021 Healthcare