With the onset of winter, the NHS approaches the most challenging time of year.
If media reports are to be believed, a trifecta of infections – known as a tripledemic – is set to cause widespread disruption. Flu, Covid and RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) are set to push NHS services to the limit, with bed occupancy at record highs and staff themselves struggling with sickness.
The problems are often seen as something that only affects the front line, but some trusts are beginning to appreciate the role of back office teams in bringing forward creative and cost-effective ways of mitigating the effects of winter pressures.
In this article, we’ll take a look at the main challenges, and some of the ways in which corporate service colleagues – particularly procurement professionals – can help mitigate them.
- Staffing shortages. A perennial issue, staffing shortages are exacerbated during the winter, when staff are more likely to become sick themselves. A knock-on effect is that the additional hours worked in an effort to cover for colleagues inevitably leads to higher levels of stress, fatigue and burnout. The NHS has traditionally turned to expensive agency staff to fill the gap. More cost-effective alternatives include insourcing, when a third-party organisation is contracted to provide medical services and procedures on trust premises, often during evenings and weekends when the equipment and premises would be otherwise unused. As well as helping trusts to tackle waiting lists for particular clinics, insourcing can also be used to help address a shortage of staff within a particular speciality. Designed as a short- to medium-term solution, insourcing provides organisations with more control over the service than alternative routes, as services are generally covered under the trusts own CQC registration, meaning that the insourcing third party will adhere to the policies and procedures of the host trust. Rates are typically at or below tariff, too.
- Bed shortages. Last winter, the average inpatient bed occupancy rate was over 95% - well above the recommended 75 – 90%. NHS England’s delivery plan for recovering urgent and emergency services committed the health service to scaling up the use of virtual wards in order to ease pressure on inpatient beds. Virtual wards, often known as “hospital at home”, allow patients to be cared for in their own homes by a multi-disciplinary team who are able to provide a variety of tests and treatments via apps, wearables and other devices. NHS SBS has a suite of framework agreements designed to make setting up virtual wards as simple, swift and cost-effective as possible. The framework agreements cover everything from devices that remotely monitor a patient’s movements and use artificial intelligence to build an accurate picture of daily activities, through to full end-to-end solutions that provide a complete and comprehensive virtual ward service to the trust’s own specifications.
- Delayed discharges. When bed space is at a premium, it’s imperative to ensure that every patient occupying a bed is there for clinical reasons. The Patient Discharge and Mental Health Step Down Beds framework agreement helps trusts do this effectively, supporting the transition of patients to either home, or to an alternative care setting. By providing support including clinical care and frailty care, suppliers on this framework agreement are able to help trusts reduce the length of inpatient stays and the associated costs. For example, The James Paget University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has freed up over 23,000 bed-days since partnering with HomeLink Healthcare, with the procurement taking place via NHS SBS’s framework agreement.
- Diagnostic delays. Diagnostic delays can be caused by either a shortage of equipment – scanners etc – or a shortage of staff trained to interpret and act upon the results. NHS SBS has specialist framework agreements to help reduce both types. For example, Artificial Intelligence has a strong track record in improving both the speed and accuracy of diagnoses, and specialist AI software can be procured via a range of unique framework agreements. Additional capacity in CT, MRI and plain film (X-rays) can also be procured via a specialist teleradiology framework agreement.
For more information on how you can use NHS SBS’s procurement services to help your trust meet the winter pressures ahead, visit Framework Agreements | NHS SBS or contact [email protected]
