Delivering change for the better

The NHS has some large-scale issues that need to be resolved today which could benefit from the implementation of a range of consultancy skills that do not always naturally reside within the NHS, helping it to release some of its latent power. Performance Solutions for example, a division of GE Healthcare, is an outcome focused delivery partner for the NHS. In partnership with hospitals and health systems it has helped to improve operational performance, and can help Trusts to face today’s QIPP challenges, as well as enabling them to be adequately prepared for future challenges. Andy Ward took on the position of managing principal, at Performance Solutions UK, in 2011 to help customers in the healthcare sector identify and reduce unnecessary waste coming from under-utilisation of resources, unintended clinical variation and fragmented care delivery, while also delivering cost savings and improving the quality of patient care. “The QIPP challenge and its focus on the need to take £20 billion out of the healthcare system by 2015 is one of the big issues facing the NHS today,” said Andy Ward. “We are now halfway through the period given to achieve this goal and it is important that momentum is kept up. I believe that, in many Trusts, people are still focusing on taking waste out of local parts of the system, and are not looking at the potential savings possible at the transformational change level. Now is the time for Trusts to start thinking bigger and to introduce system wide changes,” he said. The Government has made clear its commitment to the integration of health and social care, but Andy Ward believes that, to date, in reality this has mostly revolved around organisational integration. “It has not focused on freeing up some of those integration savings to make healthcare cheaper, but also better. The technology and knowledge is available today to help the NHS achieve these goals – be it physical asset tracking software or reducing the unwarranted variation of care by using business analytics in a clinical setting. These are the areas that healthcare leaders really need to focus on,” said Andy Ward.

Beyond QIPP

He went on to discuss the challenges beyond QIPP. “I believe that the present cost pressures and affordability issues being placed on the healthcare sector will continue past the QIPP deadline, so it is important to focus on changing the way that healthcare is delivered to ensure that the NHS remains free at the point of delivery in the future.” Performance Solutions is actively working with hospitals and providers in the community to help them deliver their business objectives – which could be cost reduction, patient care improvement or increased staff satisfaction. It does this using a variety of techniques drawn from GE’s library of skills that are applied to its own healthcare business, as well as its extensive knowledge of the latest healthcare technology advances. GE has been working in the healthcare sector for many years and has a good understanding, from both a clinical and a management perspective, about what needs to happen to ensure a good healthcare system. “We have been able to draw on this knowledge and can speak in a language that will be understood, from both a clinical and management perspective, to bring about change in many healthcare projects,” said Andy Ward. “We can help customers achieve their desired goal, whether this be to remove cost from the system, increase the quality of the patient experience or increase clinical quality. In addition to the intellectual property of GE, we have some clever technology and algorithms to draw on, that scale across a variety of industries, to supplement our advisory role in healthcare. Performance Solutions has a national team of experts across the country with a mix of skills including Six- Sigma, Kaizen and lean – management and productivity philosophies that focus on continuous improvement. We also have clinicians on the team as well as people with many years of experience in implementing healthcare systems change. Although Andy Ward agrees that there are a number of other companies who could offer a similar service, he believes that it is having the backing of the GE world that makes Performance Solutions a bit different. He went on to stress that, although it has a great deal of technology knowledge to draw on, Performance Solutions is, essentially, technology agnostic.