31.03.20
NHS Business Services Authority: ‘We are the NHS supporting the NHS’
With the ongoing coronavirus outbreak demanding significant time and care from the NHS, it has become vitally important for all aspects of the health and care industry to support one another and contribute to the collective effort.
Having only just recently featured the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) and their Chief Executive Michael Brodie in our NHE Magazine (NHE March/April 2020 edition), we learnt extensively about the vital work their organisation does behind the scenes to facilitate the NHS running smoothly.
And that has been a real message, and source for inspiration, during this coronavirus outbreak. Even beyond the hard work being done by front line healthcare professionals, in these equally vital procurement, supply chain and administrative roles within the NHS and beyond we are seeing continual collaboration and innovation between partners, both traditional and those outside the usual industry scope.
This is a national health situation at the moment, and we are seeing a national response.
The same sentiments were reflected by Michael as he reflected on the work he is seeing behind the scenes at NHSBSA and their colleagues to support those front line colleagues in the battle against Covid-19.
Michael Brodie, Chief Executive of NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA)
Michael explained: “We are living through history.
“A few short weeks ago I wrote in the very pages of NHE magazine that the NHS is our nation’s greatest institution. It provides hope, it fixes us in our time of need and helps us to live longer and healthier lives, creating more memories with those that we care most about.
“But to be at its best, its most efficient and its most effective, the frontline NHS needs support and the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) exists to provide that support. We are the expert delivery organisation relied upon by Government and the health and care system to provide a range of complex and essential high volume business services to support the day-to-day smooth running of the NHS.
“I didn’t know then quite how close our ‘time of need’ would be and that it would also be the NHS’s time of need.
“Our frontline doctors and nurses need us to maintain the platform that ensures they get paid, our pharmacists and dentists need the cash flow that our services provide to continue to keep essential primary care services operating and our NHS pensioners need their monthly pension to support them through the difficult months ahead.
“Maintaining these critical services, whilst crucially ensuring that we look after the health, safety and wellbeing of our own colleagues is uppermost in all of the intensive planning and operational delivery we are doing day-to-day.
“At the same time we have stood up over a dozen new national, at scale services, such as supporting the PHE coronavirus helpline, taking 20% of all call capacity, standing up the text messaging service to help shield the most vulnerable in society and we are providing the technology infrastructure underpinning the new testing service that has been rolled out.
“Whilst I am proud of the efforts of my NHSBSA colleagues, none of this is unique.
“Collaboration, at pace and with shared purpose has been an inspiring feature of the response to the outbreak and everywhere I look I see organisations which are part of the NHS support infrastructure running towards the fight in their own way and doing all that they can to support our frontline colleagues in the health and care system – who of course we send our profound thanks and admiration to. We are the NHS supporting the NHS.”