Lord Darzi’s recently concluded independent investigation of the state of the NHS in England punctuates how productivity can be significantly enhanced through digital transformation, elective recovery efforts and modernising the NHS estate.
The review underscores the importance of embracing digital tools and technologies to streamline services, improve patient outcomes and reduce waiting times for elective procedures. Furthermore, it highlights the urgent need to invest in future-proofing the NHS’s infrastructure, to pave the way for a stronger and more efficient NHS.
Waiting lists continue to grow at a rate hospitals find challenging. At 7.6 million, the number of treatments and the 6.4 million people waiting for them remains stubbornly high. The latest NHS figures show 41% have already waited longer than 18 weeks.
To keep waitlists moving, the NHS needs the buildings and facilities – encompassing hospitals, clinics and administrative buildings, to accommodate staff and treat patients.
Modernising it is a critical priority and involves refurbishing outdated buildings, investing in new technologies and designing environments that enhance patient experience and staff efficiency.
The Estates Returns Information Collection estimates it will take £11.6bn for the NHS to return its run-down buildings and equipment to a suitable condition.
Lord Darzi’s review also stipulates a major tilt towards technology is needed to unlock productivity at clinical level to transform care, and for NHS staff working outside of hospitals, to benefit from digital systems.
Addressing these challenges isn’t an easy task. Often, it requires collaboration across teams and organisations, additional resources and extra capacity.
Finding the right suppliers, sourcing the right solutions, keeping within budget constraints and working through the clearance hurdles is challenging, time consuming and where speed is of the essence, slows procurement down.
To support, NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS) has created Combined Framework Agreement Solutions, grouping together framework agreements from its four categories – Business Services, Construction and Estates, Digital & IT and Health that together, help health and care organisations to meet these challenges and achieve key NHS targets and objectives.
The first solution, Digital Transformation for Better Patient Outcomes, enables the delivery of productivity savings and supports improved patient outcomes across the NHS. It includes artificial intelligence that speeds up the diagnostics and treatment of stroke, technology that facilitates care being delivered remotely and at home via virtual wards, and intelligent automation to automate back-office and clinical processes so staff can get on with caring for patients.
The next solution has been designed to help tackle NHS elective recovery targets, which when faced with a backlog of patient appointments and limited capacity to deliver services, is challenging. This combined framework agreement solution provides additional capacity to help see more patients, more quickly within a trust, with the option of utilising out of hours care providers.
The final solution, Future-proofing Estates and Infrastructure, supports the NHS across several areas – from furnishings to the running of buildings, constructing new theatres and hospitals to treat more patients, through to its award-winning Sustainable Healthcare Recycling & Waste Management Framework Agreement, which has been recognised for transforming the management of clinical waste by employing the services and technologies that can reuse and process it in a cost-effective and sustainable way.
Free to use, all the framework agreements included have been carefully negotiated with suppliers to ensure they offer the best-of-breed products and services at highly competitive pricing. With a comprehensive procurement exercise undertaken, the NHS can save valuable time and resource by directly awarding or conducting further competition, as required, and procure at pace. And, if an NHS Trust doesn’t see a combined framework agreement solution that addresses its specific needs, NHS SBS can work with it to develop something that does.
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