Annual Conference and Exhibition 2023

Samira Ahmed, award winning journalist and broadcaster will open the conference.

NHS Providers chief executive, Sir Julian Hartley opens the conference, reflecting on the achievements in the provider sector despite the challenges being faced, as we head into the Winter period.

Significant progress has been made over the last year to recover care backlogs, but there is still work to do to reduce waiting times and lists across all sectors. This session will examine the current situation, exploring what recovering care backlogs sustainably and equitably really means, and what it requires at both national and local levels.

The NHS Workforce Plan is a major step forward in moving towards a sustainable future for NHS staff and improving patient care. Staff retention has a significant role to play in ensuring the ambitious plan is delivered. A major factor for retention is ensuring that NHS staff who need it have access to accommodation which is high quality and sustainable, as well as located near to hospitals and other core healthcare facilities. The supply of suitable accommodation has been limited over recent years, mainly due to the restricted capital funding available to NHS Trusts and the need to focus on front line services.

The NHS Homes Alliance is a collaborative group made up of representatives from the public and private sector, brought together to consider the challenges in relation to NHS staff accommodation and how they might be overcome in order to unlock the delivery of new homes for NHS staff. The group has published a White Paper making recommendations on delivery models for accommodation, which has gained traction with both the Department of Health and Social Care and Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Capsticks have contributed to the White Paper and this session will focus on the recommendations that have been made and the available models for delivery. We will draw upon various case studies and we will be joined by our client Aileen Hogan (programme manager) from Community Health Partnerships to provide insight from the client perspective into the issues and challenges faced and how they can be resolved.

With the ongoing focus on recovery of care backlogs, efficiency improvements and unprecedented savings targets, NHS Supply Chain continually strives to deliver a resilient procurement and supply chain service, enabling the NHS to deliver safe and excellent patient care.

Presenting with trust and ICS representatives NHS Supply Chain will share insights from an Orthopaedic hip and knee project saving South Yorkshire £1 million per annum, and the tangible benefits that greater innovation, clinical and procurement collaboration, and supply chain resilience will deliver on behalf of the system – contributing to the Provider and ICS efficiency plans and the NHS Supply Chain target of driving £1 billion incremental value back to the NHS by 2030.

View the session slides here.

In this session we will outline how bringing together new clinical models supported by innovative technology can make a huge difference to the provision of sustainable healthcare, and how the future hospital will look very different as a result.

With practical examples from across the country of ways in which a home based focus with digital support is transforming care pathways, as well as extending the reach of clinical staff beyond traditional boundaries, with successful schemes operating through acute, community and ambulance trusts.

We will discuss the implications for care in the twenty-first century and board level leadership and hear the rich experiences of those in the room.

View the slides here.

This session will explore the lessons learnt and ongoing experiences of the relationships between provider collaboratives and place based working, looking at how trusts are working together to achieve shared aims and ambitions for local communities. The focus will be on mental health services, although the lessons will be relevant to all providers, giving insight on both vertical and horizontal collaboration.

The ‘Improving Lives’ programme is about fundamentally changing the way people with urgent need are supported in Coventry. It is being delivered against a backdrop of developing Coventry place within the Integrated Care System.

In this session, those delivering this ambitious, large-scale programme will describe the new model being implemented in Coventry, what it has taken to make it happen and the challenges faced along the way. They will describe the impact it is having for residents, colleagues and how the system works together going forwards.

More about the programme: The programme is underpinned by an ambition that people’s experience of health & social care in Coventry will be dictated by what they need, rather than by the services the system has. An initial diagnostic phase identified a number of places where the system wasn’t operating as effectively as it could, resulting in non-ideal outcomes for residents. There were opportunities within the hospital to progress people's treatment more quickly and discharge them as soon as they were ready, and to join up fragmented intervention services across the City. 

The current phase of the programme involves addressing these opportunities. Central to this is the creation of Local Integrated Teams with single operational management across Coventry. These teams handle all urgent health and social care needs for residents, either directly providing the support or coordinating specialist teams. They are connected through relationships and digital interfaces to a wide range of people and services, from care providers and the ambulance service, to those working front door. Achieving this in Coventry will be the first of its kind in England and could transform the way we provide care in the NHS.

Recovering core operational performance and taking a population health improvement approach, that reduces inequalities, to recovery can be seen as mutually exclusive. In this session, we will explore how trust leaders across the acute, community, mental health and ambulance sectors have taken a health inequalities approach to recovery and how they have communicated the value of this approach across their organisation and to system partners. 

Improving productivity and balancing the books are a priority for the NHS. With efficiency targets increasing, NHS providers need to develop skills and share best practice to ensure this challenge is met whilst still improving service quality and reducing backlogs.

In January 2023, with less than 20% efficiency target identified through their traditional planning process, a Midlands Acute Trust approached NHS South, Central and West (SCW) to help them co-produce a ‘robust and credible’ plan.

This session describes how bringing in external support resulted in detailed plans for delivering £24m in 23/24, plus lessons learned across systems and providers that optimise delivery of efficiency targets.

View the session slides here.

In the era of rapidly advancing technology and the pressing need for sustainable healthcare systems, Electronic Patient Records (EPRs) play a crucial role in improving patient care, enhancing efficiency, and reducing costs.

However, the high price tags associated with traditional EPR implementations have posed significant challenges for the NHS and raised questions about the best use of taxpayer’s money.

In this session, Mark will lead a discussion with two digital transformation leaders from NHS trusts who will share valuable experiences and insights into recent EPR deployments including:

• The importance of sustainability in healthcare and the role of EPRs, exploring the current challenges faced by the NHS and highlighting the need for sustainable practices to ensure long-term viability.
• How it is possible to accelerate digital maturity with a cost-effective approach that improves patient safety and reliability of patient care.
• The benefits of a scalable and modular EPR system that can be implemented in a phased approach, reducing upfront costs, and enabling faster deployment.
• The importance of interoperability and data integration to maximise the value of your EPR.
• Usability and clinical leadership as critical success factors.

In this session, GatenbySanderson will share the trends from their research of public sector leadership. They will draw on evidence-based findings to present the typical profile of NHS leaders, and look at how these compare to wider public sector leadership. They will explore how NHS leaders can build on compassionate leadership approaches, enhance collaboration, and drive outcomes to address current challenges, leveraging their strengths and considering areas for growth.

In recent years the NHS has moved from an emphasis on competition to one that encourages collaboration and integration. As system working continues to mature, we aim to explore the challenges and opportunities senior trust leaders have experienced in moving to a new way of working, from the leadership of single organisations to leadership across organisational boundaries. The discussion will allow speakers to share their thoughts on what they have learnt about their leadership styles in this new context and the practical tips they can share with their peers.

Join us for a discussion about the race disciplinary gap and how NHS providers are successfully addressing the inequality. We will consider the implications of the disciplinary gap for staff morale, patient care and legal risk. This session presents an invaluable opportunity to gain insights from Hempsons’ extensive legal expertise coupled with real-world experience and approaches from a senior NHS HR/Equality leader. By attending, delegates will be empowered with the knowledge and tools to devise effective, strategies aimed at reducing the disciplinary gap.

Read more on this topic in the latest guide developed in collaboration with NHS Providers race equality programme here.

An opportunity for NHS leaders' thinking to be shaped by engaging diverse staff voices to improve organisational culture. With morale at an all-time low in the NHS, this is an opportunity for delegates to hear from NHS staff and leaders as they speak openly and directly about enablers and blockers to work which they are enacting to improve their and their colleagues’ experience at work.

Showcasing how to create and deploy a bespoke Management system (aligned to NHS Impact) that strategically aligns everyone’s work, removes unwarranted variation, celebrates our people and creates a culture of learning. This is not additionality, rather a foundational way of working which harnesses the talent and imagination across the organisation and sets it free to innovate, deliver their own service improvements and build sustainable solutions that are defined by high quality safe care.

View the session slides here.

There is a lot of evidence that providers and provider collaboratives articulate concerns about ‘governance’ as one of the key challenges they are experiencing. Whether it is from NHS Providers own survey of provider collaboratives or case studies and feedback from the provider collaborative programme, or insights from providers’ approaches to Browne Jacobson for legal advice – it’s clear that ‘governance’ in provider collaboration can be seen as a stumbling block to be overcome rather than a facilitator of effective oversight and control.

In the format of a conversation with Dr Habib Naqvi, this session will explore the importance of data in reducing health inequalities, looking at the following:

• Understand where the health inequalities lie within the communities being served and their impact.
• The actions required to improve the quality of the data held.
• How these can support the development of evidence-based interventions that improve experience and outcomes.

View the session slides here.

Following a successful career in television production, Margaret led a number of successful businesses before turning to analysing business leadership, highlighting issues such as wilful blindness, dealing with uncertainty and the benefits of creative collaboration. We welcome Margaret to discuss key leadership challenges facing NHS provider organisations.

This session will discuss: improvement approaches (sharing experience and learning from the NHS and beyond); regulators’ role in supporting improvement and innovation; and the importance of embedding a culture of improvement within organisations.

View the session slides here.

Sir Ron Kerr, opens the drinks reception with a speech.

Conference day 1 close.

We would like to thank Newton who will be sponsoring our drinks reception. 

Sir Julian Hartley will provide the opening remarks and hand over to our sponsors.

We would like to thank Altera Digital Health, BD and Hempsons who will be sponsoring conference dinner. 

The Leeds Health and Care Partnership is currently delivering “HomeFirst”, a bold and innovative programme aiming to achieve a sustainable, person-centred, home-first model of intermediate care across Leeds that is joined up and promotes independence.

The programme consists of five core projects which aim to collectively address areas of opportunity identified in a Place-wide diagnostic to better support people in Leeds. Fundamental to all of these is a new system control mechanism which combines new ways of working and data visualisation to embed a culture of data-driven decision making in Leeds.

In this session, leaders from the programme will describe how they have significantly enhanced system visibility in a way which is helping them to manage system pressure, improve the efficiency of services and ultimately to deliver services which lead to the most independent outcomes for patients.  They will also explore themes around the system-wide cultural shift that this enhanced visibility is enabling, as well as the practicalities of combining data sets from multiple system partners, processing and visualising this data and the system governance required to maximise the use of this new reporting.

Delegates attending this session will have the opportunity to interact with the dashboard themselves, in addition to plenty of Q&A time with the team involved in delivering it. 

Neighbourhood Care focuses on a collaborative and innovative approach to personalised care within communities, delivered through integrated neighbourhood teams. It shifts the approach from a disjointed siloed one to a fully collaborative healthcare system that prioritises health inequalities and results in positive patient outcomes with flourishing local teams. It is aligned to the Fuller Stocktake report’s three pillars of preventative, chronic, urgent and episodic care.

What will you get out of this session: This session will provide an opportunity for you to explore how successful collaborative Neighbourhood Care could be delivered with input from an expert panel who have first-hand experience of developing new approaches aligned to this model.

Samira Ahmed, award winning journalist and broadcaster welcomes delegates to day two of the conference.

The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care is invited to join us and share her vision for the NHS as we enter an election year, following a turbulent time of industrial action and immense pressures on the service.

A chance to hear from NHS England’s chief executive about the key priorities for the NHS provider sector.

Today's generation of doctors wish to exercise different career and life choices, while the needs of the patients they serve are also evolving. To meet these challenges, and put the workforce on a sustainable footing for the future, we need to re-think medical education and training to be more flexible, and help doctors better meet the different challenges of demographic changes.

Join the GMC for this interactive session to:

• understand the changing patterns and preferences of doctors in training, and how to support those choices to keep trainees in the workforce
• learn what employers can do, even when there are significant service pressures, to prioritise education and training
• see where the opportunities lie to evolve traditional training routes, to the benefit of the profession and the public.

2024 will be a significant year for procurement. This session will cover the key issues that board members will need to know in relation to the following changes:

• The rules governing healthcare procurement will change on 1 January 2024 with the introduction of the Provider Selection Regime (subject to Parliamentary approval). This will significantly change how healthcare is commissioned.
• The Procurement Act is expected to come into force in October 2024. These new rules will replace the Public Contracts Regulations 2015.

View the session slides here.

What does truly collaborative working look like?  Where are the successes, the failures and what impact does local infrastructure variation have, when redesigning the skin cancer pathway utilising technology. This session will provide insight into the approach taken by SNEE ICB, to meet the needs of their patients, with a constrained dermatology workforce, to embed AI triaging technology into the skin cancer pathway. The session will use skin cancer pathways as an example, the approach taken and considerations made can be applied more broadly across care pathways and services.

Looking across pre-primary CDCs to secondary care pathways, SNEE will talk to the successes, failures, challenges and opportunities that have enabled system transformation. Discussing how you can ensure everyone within a system can benefit from embedding innovative AI technology, but never assuming one size fits all with skin cancer pathway design.

What you can expect to learn:

• How understanding the differences for each provider can lead to successful transformation and provision for your patients.
• How open doors and strong clinical buy are key to system transformation.
• How to recognise the failures and use these to design optimal pathways for success.
• Understanding the workforce that can deliver successful skin cancer assessments using AI.
• How continually pushing for improvement can transform systems and successfully serve your population.

View the session slides here.

This breakout session will explore how trusts leaders from across the provider sector are leveraging existing organisational capacity and capability to deliver digital transformation. Funding constraints and workforce shortages can pose a barrier for trusts looking to harness the potential of digital transformation to help tackle trusts' most pressing issues; our panel of trust board leaders will share their quick fire learnings and advice on topics such as electronic patient records, strategy and workforce.

In this breakout session, trust leaders will hear from organisations that have overcome challenging circumstances to create positive environments focused on improving quality of care and patient safety. We will discuss the enablers of patient safety, such as national frameworks and co-production with staff and communities. The session will draw upon themes of governance and leadership, culture and behaviours, resourcing and workforce levels. 

This session will discuss the productivity and financial challenges facing trusts in systems. While the drivers of productivity and financial challenges will be explored, the session will focus on how trusts are working to improve productivity, what can be learned from key system partners, and the wider national support needed to scale up potential solutions.  

The Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care will join us to discuss what he sees as the priorities for the NHS as we head towards a general election.

This discussion will explore the underlying challenge of healthcare reform. We will consider how organisational leadership can improve, and give senior leaders at the conference a chance to share their views on the future of the NHS.

View the session slides here.