January 2012 - Sandwell & West Birmingham Hospitals

SWBAC (12/11) 068
5.1 Internal Audit progress report, including recommendation tracking
update
SWBAC (12/11) 057
SWBAC (12/11) 057 (a)
Mr Capener advised that progress of the Internal Audit work was ahead of
the agreed profile. The Committee was informed that during the quarter, a
number of pieces of work had been completed, including an occupation
study of the Birmingham Treatment Centre. It was highlighted that the
majority of the reviews had provided full or significant assurance.
Moderate assurance was pointed out to have been gained from the review
into Access to Medical Records, which the Committee was advised required
further follow up work. It was explained that the key issue with respect to
this review was ensuring that the appropriate workstreams were risk
assessed, which would be undertaken routinely when a Sharepoint solution
was introduced and as such a revised implementation date of 31 March
2012 had been set for the action.
The Committee was informed that much work remained in progress,
particularly with respect to reviewing the Trust’s financial systems.
In terms of recommendation tracking, Mr Capener reported that there was
a diminishing number of outstanding recommendations and that a
cleansing exercise would be undertaken before the end of the year to
assess whether recommendations remained current and appropriate. Dr
Sahota asked whether sufficient progress was being made to deliver the
high priority actions and was informed that these were in hand. Mrs
Hunjan noted that there had been changes to the implementation dates
for a number of actions, such as those derived from the reviews into
Outpatient Utilisation and Medical Staff Job Planning. She emphasised the
need for these actions to be delivered by the end of the financial year and
suggested that there needed to be clear evidence of progress presented at
the next meeting of the Audit Committee.
Regarding the Medical Staffing Job Planning, Mrs Hunjan noted that
inconsistency with paying Clinical Directors’ responsibility allowances had
been identified. Incorrect payments to medical staff were also noted to
have been identified and Mrs Hunjan asked how many of these instances
there had been and whether they had been corrected. It was further
suggested that confirmation that payments for job planning responsibilities
had ceased was needed. Professor Alderson remarked that the job
planning actions were especially complex to deliver and highlighted that
the current timescales for completion may not be realistic. It was agreed
that Kam Dhami, Director of Governance, should be invited to provide an
update on both the progress with delivery of the actions from the Internal
Audit review and the job planning work in the wider sense.
ACTION:
Mr Grainger‐Payne to arrange for Kam Dhami to attend the
next Audit Committee meeting to present an update on
the progress with medical staffing job planning
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