As part of our role to support our members, we always seek to highlight best practice and showcase ways in which trusts can improve their finances and the quality of care they provide to their patients.
With the NHS under pressure to make efficiency savings and change how care is delivered, it is important that we learn from each other. When one of our members has used a product or service that has supported their work or dramatically improved services for their trust, we want all our members to know about it. This ultimately helps to share that success in the hope that it can be replicated in other trusts.
With the NHS under pressure to make efficiency savings and change how care is delivered, it is important that we learn from each other.
Our members were telling us that with all the time pressures facing senior management, they were finding it increasingly difficult to seek solutions for the challenges they faced. At the same time, suppliers to the NHS were talking to us about the innovative solutions they had successfully applied in trusts which they wanted other providers across the country to benefit from. This is why we launched NHS Providers Connect – a service which aims to bridge this gap and let our members know about what products and services their peers are using to achieve much-needed efficiency savings. We are currently working with several partners including the British Red Cross and Locum's Nest.
This is why we launched NHS Providers Connect – a service which aims to bridge this gap and let our members know about what products and services their peers are using to achieve much-needed efficiency savings.
The British Red Cross is supporting the NHS to improve patient flow with one of their assisted discharge services. People are getting stuck in hospital, often because of a lack of care closer to home – particularly those living on their own. The impact this has on people and the system is hard to overstate. Older people are estimated to lose up to 5% of muscle strength per day in hospital, ultimately reducing their ability to live independently at home once discharged. In 2017 the British Red Cross helped over 187,000 people to live independently, and as a result avoid unnecessary hospital admissions and delayed discharges. They meet with the person prior to discharge to discuss how they can best help them to get home and to identify if and how they can help them better manage their health and wellbeing. On the day of discharge, to ensure people are settled safely back into their own home, the British Red Cross support people through a range of tasks.
Locum's Nest is the NHS' first digital collaborative bank for doctors, founded by two doctors. The app matches locum shifts to available doctors by cutting out the need for expensive agencies – successfully increasing the number of bank staff available to trusts, reducing the cost per shift and minimising or eliminating agency spend. In 2016/2017 the NHS spent £2.4bn on agency staff to cover vacancies and, on average, recruitment agencies charge NHS trusts 10% for every shift filled. Last year NHS trusts in England spent £240m in agency commission fees. Locum's Nest charges just £15 per shift filled meaning the estimated net saving available to the NHS in commission alone is £200m.
These really are the type of innovations that prompt the question "why isn't everyone doing this?"
Join us on 20 March at our new event to find out more about these services and to explore where the NHS is heading in terms of innovation. For more information about NHS Providers Connect download our case study reports or contact David Morgan, business development manager at NHS Providers.