The NHS is the UK's biggest employer. The South Central Region which stretches from Milton Keynes and Banbury in the north to the Isle of White in the south has almost 90,000 staff and a budget of over £5 billion. That is a lot of staff to communicate with.

The 'customer' base is over 4 million. How did they serve their customers in 2007? From the 24 NHS trust organisations in the region they provided the following customer services:

• Over one million A&E attendances
• More than 47,000 babies born
• Over 250,000 emergency 999 calls answered (86,000 were deemed life threatening.)

The NHS is changing. Organisationally and culturally. They are becoming more open. Engaging in dialogue with their 'customers' - patients. But change takes time. In the case of the NHS communicating with patients and prospective patients as well as almost 90,000 employees working 365/24 hours takes time and effort and so they have to use every communication tool available.

Tonight the Focus team are again video recording a 'town hall' style debate on a proposed change to health policy. Gone are the days when a decision was was made by unknown people and the public were simply told after the event if at all. The public debate has pro-change and anti-change supporters on the same panel and the publics response and feedback will be taken into account. NHS staff who could not attend personally as welll as members of the public will be able to watch the video recording of the event. Whilst not streamed live it will be online within a day or two so maximising the outreach communication programmes.

Pictures of the camera and video mixing desk set up are on Flickr.

We had two crewed cameras and one locked off. The lock-off was a wide angle on the panel and off to the side. One of the operated ones focussed on the audience - using close ups as necessary - and the other did panel and audience close-ups. That way we were able to capture all the action with a mini crew of three. The third person was on the mixing desk switching between camera feeds and mixing and editing as they went along. The mixed feed was being recorded onto tape for later post-production editing and special effects. This meant that by early afternoon the next day the finished production could have been with the client.

Equally if they had wanted to they could have takedn the feed straight out onto the internet as a live webinar.

Corporations could use similar set-ups to capture team meetings and events where all employees would find it hard to attend.

The NHS are usinbg it as part of their public outreach and engagement programme. Not everyone could attend but now those that did not can see what happened and listen to both sides of the debate.

The NHS South Central covers an area with a population of over 4 million and employs almost 100,000 people. It is a big organisation covering Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Hampshire.

The NHS is undertaking a massive consultation exercise to help shape its future over the next decade and beyond. The project is called ‘Our NHS – our future.’ All NHS employees and members of the public are being consulted through a series 'open house' meetings and feedback events.

8 clinical pathways covering all stages of life from birth to death have been identified. The pathway teams are lead by practicing NHS clinicians as part of this ‘root and branch’ review.

As part of the programme Focus Business Communications were asked to video one of the public consultations as it happened in Reading. We were also asked to interview leaders and participants in the pathways.

The resulting video is available on the NHS South Central web site as part of the ongoing internal and external consultation programme. It is a great example of using new media to help communicate and engage with large distributed groups.

Good session. To see more pictures visit here.

The teams made an audio podcast on the day and this will be edited and uploading as an internal podcast in the next week or so. The groups could see many applications for podcasting within the NHS both for internal and external communication.

There were concerns over management of the process and the cost (NHS is trying to balance the books) as it would happen in any organisation. With over 90,000 employees one of the biggest issues is getting messages through middle management to all staff. Being a 365/24 organisation puts even more pressure on communication lines.

Today we have the NHS in our studios to help edit the podcast recordings we made at last weeks workshop. The intention is to get a podcast that can be used internally within the organisation to discuss the use of podcasting to help internal communication. A podcast on podcasting as it were.

We are not sure what we will end up with (that is part of the fun of podcasting) but with a workforce of over 90,000 anything we can do to help will be great.

Watch this space....

Tomorrow I lead a workshop session on podcasting for the South Central NHS Trust.

The NHS is a big organisation undergoing considerable change and we will be exploring how podcasting can help with internal and external communication.

Some facts and figures from the NHS South Central web site.

·         It covers Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. It runs from Banbury and Milton Keynes at its northern edge down to the Isle of Wight in the south.

·         This is a population of around 4 million people across 10,000 sq km – four times the size of Luxembourg!

·         Within the region there are nine PCTs, nine acute trusts (two of which are Foundation Trusts), three mental health trusts (one of which is a Foundation Trust), one learning disability trust, one specialist trust and one ambulance.

·         The total annual budget is £5bn.

·         It employs more than 93,000 people who work in primary and secondary care – approximately 5% of the regions working population - making the NHS the largest employer in the area (The Times says the NHS in the UK is the 3^rd largest employer in the world after the Indian railways and Chinese Army)

·         There are more than 25,500 qualified nurses, 2,300 hospital consultants and 2,700 GPs

In 2005:

• Almost 3.5 million people visited a GP or practice nurse
• There were almost 1 million A&E attendances
• More than 43,500 babies were born
• Across the ambulance trusts around 230,000 emergency calls were answered, 80,000 of which were deemed life threatening.

That is a big organisation to change!

I have been asked to run a workshop at the NHS, South Central* Communication Professionals annual conference on 6^th June. My workshop is entitled ‘Exploiting Social Media, Web 2.0, Podcasting and its practical uses’.

We are going to try and record part of the workshop to podcast later to NHS South Central communication professionals unable to attend the conference and those based elsewhere in the UK.

The topics for the day are being built around New Media, Web 2, audio and video podcasting, webvideo and social media sites.

The NHS is the third largest workforce in the world so faces a real challenge in communicating effectively to its staff, patients and the public. This challenge is made all the greater by the number of changes it is going through under a public and political ‘spotlight’.

One of the biggest changes it is facing is the increasing requirement to use the professional discipline of marketing. This is driven by the move to Foundation Trust status, the introduction of patient choice and the introduction of private sector companies into NHS healthcare.

* South Central covers NHS Trusts across Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, and Oxfordshire.