01.02.13
A strategic vision
Source: National Health Executive Jan/Feb 2013
The Strategic Projects Team at NHS Midlands & East, which designs and delivers change across the health service through the use of new partnerships, acquisitions and ways of working, will need a new home after April once its host SHA closes. NHE talks to its director, Andrew MacPherson, about the future.
The Strategic Projects Team (SPT) at NHS Midlands & East must make a decision in the next few weeks about its vision for the future and where its new home should be from April, when the SHA cluster closes as part of the structural NHS reforms.
The SPT was set up in 2009 under Andrew MacPherson, working with Dr Stephen Dunn (now director of delivery & development at the NHS Trust Development Authority, although he remains involved with the SPT) and Sir Neil McKay (now the SHA cluster chief executive), primarily to manage the first franchising of an NHS hospital, Hinchingbrooke. The team has since taken on a wide range of projects, including some outside its own geographical region.
MacPherson said: “We brought together a set of diverse skills that finds us in a position now, nearly four years on, where we’ve actually got some £3.8bn of contracts for the NHS over that period. While they’ve naturally centred on our regional cluster, they’ve also provided input into a wide range of projects and programmes of national importance, ranging from the Friends & Family test, to Transforming Pathology, to creating models for sustainable healthcare purposes for trusts and providers.
“We’ve also engaged competitively with the independent sector; we’re getting towards of £100m of independent sector investment into the NHS as a result of the work we’ve been doing.
“The challenge we have is that we’re a bit of a one-off – I wouldn’t be so arrogant as to say we’re unique, but there isn’t a natural home for a delivery team doing macro-work, which tends to focus on providers, but of course offers significant benefit to commissioners as well.”
He said the team won’t lack for a home somewhere – MacPherson has been offered “a range of generous opportunities”, which could include being hosted by a foundation trust, a commissioning support unit, an independent sector organisation, or possibly within an academic health science network.
“I think it’s recognised by senior colleagues that we have made a significant contribution in our short life. The NHS does have a tendency to fail to recycle and leverage the experience it has: specialised services tend to be drawn from the ‘Big 4’ [accountancy and financial services firms]. There’s nothing wrong with that, but people repeatedly pay for the same thing over and over again.
“What we’ve built over the last four years is not only the experience, but a set of tools that we and others believe can significantly benefit the NHS.”
NHS passion plus commercial sense
MacPherson praised the “courage and vision” of the senior leadership team at the SHA and now the SHA cluster in providing the necessary “air cover” for it to undertake radical and sometimes controversial work, for example the Hinchingbrooke project.
He said: “We started out wanting to do something good for patients, and good for taxpayers. I was enticed into the NHS in a full-time role from the independent sector, having previously been a non-exec director of a local trust, to do some really significant change. My background is in customer service and developing culture change, and what hits you between the eyes about the NHS is the huge amount of passion that exists: many organisations in the independent sector would give their right arms for it.
“We want to bring that passion together with good commercial sense and discipline: leverage competition to make sure economic outcomes are sustainable and make sense and to ensure the NHS is around in the future.
“If we can continue that vision with the work we do with people like the NHS Commissioning Board, who we’re working closely with on the Friends & Family test and other culture changes, it’s hugely satisfying and it strikes me that in these beleaguered times, with a burning platform in the NHS, it’s the responsible thing to do to keep it going. That resonates with people like Neil McKay who’s finishing in April and it’s part of his legacy that small teams like ours and individuals like myself continue to make a contribution.”
Continued support
Wherever the SPT chooses to base itself from April, it will retain its physical base in Fulbourn near Cambridge, and MacPherson pledged not to “leave any projects behind” – see the panel for a flavour of the SPT’s existing commitments.
He said: “Any change programme creates anxiety and we’ve got to provide reassurance. Part of that has been to our executive customers and clients and the clinicians and the people we serve – they want to know there’s continuity of support post-April. If we were going to ‘walk off the pitch’ suddenly, that would completely contradict our approach of disciplined, sustainable delivery of projects to price and on time.
Current SPT projects
• Hinchingbrooke Next Steps
• Transforming pathology services (East of
England, E&W Midlands)
• Customer Service Strategy
• Shared Decision Making (more on p16)
• Anglia Support Partnership (ASP)
• George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust
• Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland
Reconfiguration
• Nottingham NHS Treatment Centre
• Pathology Toolkit
• Re-tendering services provided by Milton
Keynes Community Health Services
• NHS Suffolk (community services
divestment)
• Any qualified provider (AQP)
• Commercial Advisory Board
• Integrating Pathway Hubs
• Competition Panel
• Bedfordshire & Luton Mental Health and
Social Care Partnership NHS Trust (BLPT)
• Central England Audit Consortium
• A new minor injuries unit in Peterborough
• NHS Luton and NHS Bedford (community
health services divestment)
• Bedford Hospital NHS Trust (seeking a
partner to reach FT status)