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‘Groundbreaking change in challenging circumstances’

Patsy Ryan of the Strategic Projects Team outlines some of the organisation’s recent successes and its history.

Dust is settling on the most significant healthcare reforms for decades and the new NHS landscape is clearly visible. On the skyline, nestling alongside the new organisations, is an increasingly familiar powerhouse of dynamic change from pre-reform days. The unique NHS Strategic Projects Team (SPT) has transitioned into the new world – hosted now by NHS Greater East Midlands Commissioning Support Unit – and exerts significant influence supporting newly-ambitious NHS providers and commissioners.

Andrew MacPherson leads his team of hand-picked professionals; providing a unique intra-NHS service to NHS and government bodies keen to achieve powerful change. Scaling up and down on demand, from diverse clinical and service backgrounds, the team offers a rich mix of experience and expertise. Subject matter experts are drafted in (with the support of co-directors Martin Peat and Rowan Procter) as bespoke project solutions are developed and delivered with clients.

SPT was founded in 2009, when NHS East of England faced an acute hospital trust heading towards a financial cliff edge. Hinchingbrooke’s fall needed heading off, but forward-thinkers such as Dr Stephen Dunn (now of the NHS Trust Development Authority) realised the trust didn’t just need to be pulled back from the edge; it also needed setting on the path to longer term sustainability. MacPherson was asked to establish the fledgling SPT and they delivered the groundbreaking Hinchingbrooke hospital franchise project – the first of its kind in the NHS.

Since then, SPT has delivered around £4bn worth of NHS contracts, all requiring groundbreaking change in challenging circumstances. The list is diverse and complex:

• The first NHS competition for procurement of a whole mental health trust, which had significant patient safety and financial problems. The competitive tender process designed by SPT ensured the NHS was assured its organisations delivered to commercial standards of financial outcomes, as well as more familiar clinical standards.

• Divestment and procurement of community health services trusts, at scale and at pace, under the government’s Transforming Community Services programme.

• Pathology rationalisation: the first large scale commissioner-led regional execution of Lord Carter’s recommendations for transforming pathology services. The National Pathology programme management was also handed to SPT by NHS England and run on their behalf since April 2013, SPT having built a sound reputation with the Department of Health for supporting a range of associated workstreams, including the creation of a National Pathology Commissioning Tool Kit in 2011/12.

• In late 2011, Dunn and MacPherson created the net promoter-based Friends and Family Test (FFT) as an integral part of the then-East of England SHA’s ambition to create a regional ‘patient revolution’. MacPherson’s experience of customer service excellence programmes in the UK and internationally helped achieve a rapid capture of hearts and minds and significant momentum within the NHS.

SPT was working with passionate public service providers to deliver the FFT across 25% of the NHS when the programme came to the prime minister’s attention in early 2013. He announced the roll-out of FFT across the NHS by April 2015. Again, working across and through concurrent national healthcare reforms, SPT worked quietly and professionally with frontline staff and led the successful delivery of the FFT across the NHS for overnight acute, A&E and maternity services in 2013. Combined with their Midlands and East legacy and pilots across all pathways, they recently passed some 2m responses and handed a sustainable process to NHS England for continued development and delivery.

SPT completed 52 multi-pathway pilots across the country (including the first dentist and pharmacist tests) before handover to NHS England. The team will continue to provide regional guidance, support and expertise MacPherson now has his eye on FFT’s extension into other public services.

• From a wide range of interests, SPT were Cambridge & Peterborough Clinical Commissioning Group’s (CCG) preferred partner of choice in a major procurement – one of the largest in the NHS and worth £800m – to achieve regional integration of older people’s care. Groundbreaking work on the new national integrated care agenda (and a courageous move by a CCG months into its life) demands the best of everyone.

It’s not all specific client projects. Previously, the SPT have leveraged their experience through the creation of independent sector/supplier forums and, recently, a new tie with the Warwick Business School’s healthcare research faculty to share learning.

Drawing on two decades of leading customer service culture change, MacPherson also runs NHS workshops, which recently included contributions and partnerships from Royal Bank of Scotland, Air Malta, British Gas and John Lewis alongside the best practice of leading NHS trusts. MacPherson said: “‘There is an incredible amount of passion in the NHS. If we can continue to support that passion
with sound, diligent commercial skills combined with a shared drive for service excellence, it will help ensure a sustainable future for the country’s healthcare services.”

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