Trust leaders see significant opportunities in working collaboratively to benefit patients and service users. They know that no single organisation can tackle the systemic challenges facing the health and care sector alone and want to build on the success of collaboration during the COVID-19 response to deliver high quality, joined up and more efficient care for local communities.

Trusts and their system partners have been developing these collaborative ways of working for several years. However, national policy has only recently formalised them in the Health and Care Act 2022 and guidance, including on provider collaboratives and place-based partnerships.

NHS England has identified several potential benefits of provider collaboration, including reducing unwarranted variation in outcomes and access, maximising economies of scale, and improving recruitment and retention of staff. In our briefing we illustrate how trusts plan to realise these benefits and summarise the different opportunities for acute, community, mental health, specialised and ambulance trusts.

Many of the ambitions and priorities of integrated care systems (ICSs) will be delivered through trusts collaborating with each other and wider partners. In many systems, provider collaboratives – alongside place-based partnerships – will play a key role in leading service and pathway improvements, recovering backlogs of care, and delivering NHS long-term plan objectives and system-wide clinical strategies.

Trust leaders have identified several key enablers that support provider collaboration at different stages of development. These include the importance of building trust between partner organisations, focusing on shared priorities and functions rather than models and form, and ensuring changes are led by clinicians and driven by realising benefits for local communities.

The novel, complex nature of provider collaborative arrangements also creates risks for trust boards to manage. These include ensuring trust strategies align with those of provider collaboratives, integrated care board, integrated care partnership and places; avoiding recreating siloes; and understanding how collaborative arrangements could be assessed and how that will interact with trust boards’ ongoing duties and liabilities.

Governors will want to understand their trust's approach to provider collaboration and whether collaboration can help trusts achieve their aims of improving health and care for local communities. They may wish to seek assurance on how their trust boards are balancing their work in provider collaboratives with their duties as a trust, including how they are managing these risks.

For more on ICSs and their impact on trusts and councils of governors, see our ICS Frequently Asked Questions.