>> Neil Riley: My name is Neil Riley, I'm from Sheffield Teaching Hospitals.
My colleagues, Claire Riley who you've seen earlier this morning from Northumbria Healthcare
Trust and John O'Brien from Care UK.
Sadly the three Chief Executives of our organisations are not able to be with us today.
With the permission of NHS England, they have made a DVD which you will be seeing very shortly
indeed.
Showing my age, there's an element I think of earth, wind and fire about this, so rather
than cricket analogies, if you wish to work out which one is which, please feel free to
do so, but if we can show the DVD and then clearly we'll take any questions.
>> Andrew Cash: I'm Andrew Cash, Chief Executive of Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation
Trust.
I'm part of the Hospital Futures Partnership, a joint venture between Sheffield, Northumbria
Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust and Care UK.
We want to use our combined expertise to create a hospital chain, not inside a local area,
but across geographies ensuring the future of high quality and sustainable local hospitals.
We don't believe one organisation has all the answers to this challenge, that's why
we have created our partnership, combining the capabilities of an award winning teaching
hospital foundation trust, the country's most successful integrated trust and the largest
independent provider of NHS health and social care in the UK.
Working together as the Hospital Futures Partnership, partnered with one or more local hospitals,
we can create a chain which supports local clinicians and communities securing the future
of valued local hospitals.
This happens internationally but it's a new idea in the NHS.
Here's Jim Mackey to explain more.
>> Jim Mackey: Thanks Andrew.
I'm Jim Mackey, Chief Executive of Northumbria Healthcare Foundation Trust.
Andrew's right.
In the NHS we usually believe local mergers or integration are the only solution.
And they often are the right solution, something we know from our own experience in the northeast.
But not everywhere.
Sometimes there isn't a local partner with the capacity or capability or local relationships
may not be strong, so we need solutions that are not bound by local geographies.
The Hospital Futures Partnership gives us the capacity to commit intensive managerial
and clinical leadership to creating the model bringing all of the real world innovations
we have developed.
National scale supporting local services.
Where do we want to do this?
Well we don't know.
The nature of this service model, a non-geographical chain, means it must be able to go where the
need is.
It's most likely to be with smaller hospitals or in rural or coastal areas.
Supporting their success means getting a lot right.
Effective leadership, leading edge service models, quality improvement, efficient operations
and procurement, cultural change in partnerships.
This isn't about giving advice on those things, that's probably the last thing a challenged
hospital needs.
It's about real support on the ground from standardised practice to introducing exciting
innovations.
Here's Jim Easton to explain more about what we can do.
>> Jim Easton: Thanks Jim.
I'm Jim Easton, the Managing Director of Care UK.
The Hospital Futures Partnership combines the best of what our three organisations do,
creating the service models we would bring to our partners in the chain.
It starts with capacity.
We have access to clinical and managerial leadership and support from award winning
teams and we'll introduce standardised operating models in all key areas.
We'll use real models that are proven already to prevent unnecessary admissions and improve
discharges.
And we'll combine these with highly efficient diagnostics and class leading elective care.
Using simple technologies at scale, we have access to the largest network of clinical
call centres in the UK handling over two million calls a year and allowing the application
of 24/7 primary care.
Then there's innovation in remote monitoring of patients and telehealth in community settings.
There's an opportunity for community and primary care integration applying Northumbria's proven
approaches and innovations in working patterns such as those at Sheffield, seven-day working,
early adopter sites.
Our models will sustain clinical viability by using simple technologies to enhance clinical
capacity and providing support, advice and telehealth to support local specialties.
We'll improve financial viability through world class procurement and our national clinical
recruitment capability.
And all of this underpinned by a strong culture, OD and change management capability from all
three organisations.
We also have the potential to contribute capital and other non-recurring financial investment
in support of change.
And critically, we have direct experience of mobilising standard operating models in
new geographies including a playbook approach which defines how our service models should
be introduced in new locations.
This list represents the best of what we do.
Now we want to use it together to make our chain work.
>> Jim Mackey: Thanks Jim.
I hope you agree it's an ambitious list but it's not pie in the sky, it's already happening
today in the partner organisations.
There's still a lot to be worked through but we do have experience of creating and operating
joint ventures and supporting one statutory body from another, so we understand the opportunities
and risks.
We are designing the joint venture vehicle as flexibly as possible enabling the chain
approach with local NHS hospitals to be developed carefully, sensitive to the needs of local
engagement and accountability.
We're eager and ready to start.
Once an initial partner organisation is identified, we have rapid mobilisation teams ready to
go.
They will strengthen local management and clinical capacity and help operational performance
with tried and tested pathway improvement in elective and urgent care.
Our teams will help financial performance with the application of improved recruitment
and procurement methods.
They will strengthen quality, improvement and safety systems and they will build support
of clinical and managerial relationships across the chain to learn and develop in all directions.
In other words, our partnership and approach will be bringing to life the idea that the
scale and resources of a chain can support sustainable local care.
Being national on some things means being local on the important things.
>> Andrew Cash: So that's it.
I'm sure you can sense our excitement.
We're committed to utilising the strengths of our organisations to make this a success.
Our unique approach will sustain vital local services and create a chain which spreads.
Spread is built into our proposal.
Success with initial partners will encourage others to join, building the chain.
The Hospital Futures Partnership is a bold proposal that tackles important challenges.
Thank you for listening.
>>Ian Bentham: The Royal College of Anaesthetists.
This is the first of our presentations this morning that have shown some partnership with
the independent sector with Care UK.
Can you tell us how that will work and the commercial sensitivities of how you would
go into an organisation or a part of the country that is where you do not have reach as Care
UK and how would you work with other social care providers.
>>Neil Riley: Okay, thanks for that.
If I ask John to explain how that would work.
>>John O'Brien: So, good morning everybody.
The first thing to say is, it's very much work in progress.
I think perhaps that came across in the presentation you've just seen.
We have wide experience of working in partnership in various parts of the country so, and we
are already, at the moment exploring collaborative approaches and various other approaches to
the new commissioning landscape which are throwing up interesting challenges, not least
about how everything fits together from a commercial point of view, not just for Care
UK but obviously for other organisations as well.
I think at the end of the day, it's, as I said originally, it's work in progress and
to be fathomed out and to be noodled through.
So, it's one of those things that obviously everyone will think that Care UK, as an independent
sector provider, is focused upon.
The reality of it is we only work for the NHS, we're not a private company in terms
of the healthcare we provide and we are extremely patient centric in the services we provide.
So, commercially it's one of the [Inaudible] it is still to be fathomed, but in terms of
the care we provide, we've identified partners with which we can work through shared values.
So question just to this table here, just immediately there and then behind please.
>>Nigel Guest: I'm Chief Clinical Officer at Trafford NHS.
I was particularly interested in your comments about primary care and how you're linking
with that and providing a 24/7 service.
I wonder if that's through Care UK practices or whether that's a much broader primary care
in your areas?
>>Claire Riley: I think the whole point of the partnership is actually to learn from
each other and work that Northumbria's done across community, primary and social care
will be brought in at this partnership as just knowledge and expertise.
So I think there's elements of work to really be fathomed out as you said, but really detailed
around how we actually physically go and do this.
But what we're doing is bringing the strengths from each of the individual partners to address
those areas.
Question from the table behind.
>> Trevor Clower: Good morning.
It's Trevor Clower, I'm a Patient's Rep for NHS England, Nottingham.
You say you have local engagements, how deep is those local engagements and how do you
go about you know digging out street level approaches that I'm interested in?
>> John O'Brien: I'm assuming that's for me.
We have well developed patient groups in common with probably many providers around, present
in the room.
Our patient approach has been sort of polished over many years and it's also contractually
prescribed so we have to demonstrate that we are including patients at the ground floor
in all our services.
I'm responsible for cats and diagnostic services for Care UK and I think it's fair to say that
in Manchester, where we provide 60,000 patient episodes a year, it's not an exaggeration,
this service substantively changes once every six to eight weeks.
Something happens that, driven by clinicians in response to patients and sometimes commissioners,
but mostly patients, the service changes.
It's an organic service because, and it's a flexibly commissioned service, so I can,
hand on heart say, there is absolutely no question in my mind that we are responsive
to the needs of patients because we see patients on a very regular basis, we respond to patient
feedback in a way that's [Inaudible] there is no other way from our perspective of doing
it, so we use all patient feedback as effectively what it is, which is free consultation through
the services we provide.
Probably squeeze one very quick question.
>> Nick Bray: Yes, good morning.
My name is Nick Bray, I'm a patient representative, I've come from Plymouth.
Can you give me some examples, you've said about some of the ways that this is working,
could you give me examples of that.
So, this place is working with that place.
>>Neil Riley: If I can start off.
Clearly we have limited experience of this, but certainly from the Sheffield perspective,
our most direct experience as you've heard earlier in the morning has been in terms of
buddying.
We've buddied two NHS organisations that are not geographically co-located with us, one
is the North Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals Foundation Trust which is Grimsby, Scunthorpe
and Goole, and the other one is the United Lincolnshire Trust which covers Lincoln, Grantham
and Boston.
And I think that, as you've heard already this morning, there is a lot of mutual learning
that goes on in that as well as the opportunity to implement a number of the things that you
heard described in the DVD.
We've got early and positive experience of doing that.
We need to leave it there, but thank you very much, that's Hospital Futures Partnership,
thank you.