- Trust leaders across all sectors are facing an environment of unprecedented challenge as they navigate increasing demand and continued operational and financial pressures, at a time of uncertainty and change in the NHS.
- This case study report highlights the wide-ranging benefits of providers collaborating at scale through establishing strong and trusted relationships, and aligning leaders behind shared goals to improve care and deliver the greatest value for every NHS pound.
- Provider collaboratives are working together to address common challenges at the heart of the government's objectives for the NHS. This includes reducing waits and unwarranted variation in outcomes and access to services, tackling health inequalities, improving and bringing care closer to home, and supporting the recruitment, retention and development of staff.
- In the context of a tightening financial picture in which providers are being asked to deliver more with less resource, provider collaboratives are also demonstrating the value of collaborating to maximise return on investment, leverage economies of scale and to generate needed efficiencies.
- Leaders have a range of views about the benefits of collaboration that can be realised in their local contexts, but almost all share a common sense of the opportunity to drive change and deliver benefits for local communities by working in collaboration.
- This diversity in approaches and forms taken by provider collaboratives and their achievements, is a result of a deliberately open policy framework, which encouraged providers to take collaborative approaches that made sense in their local area, to reflect their local context.
- While the focus is currently on opportunities to collaborate locally to integrate care, there continues to be tangible and significant benefit to collaboration at scale and across systems and it is important that these benefits of provider collaboration are protected.
- This report underlines that lessons can be learned from the successes of collaboration at scale and across systems to support the health service to deliver on the government's 'three shifts' for the NHS.