Health and Social care

The increasing complexity and cost of delivering health and social care services has meant a greater drive for optimisation and efficiency in resource deployment. Increasingly, there’s a shift towards integration of services, within the health system itself and with partners in sectors such as social services, housing and education.

Organisations must therefore be led with strong values, targeting the right transformation programmes and reinforced by robust operating models and culture. We have supported clients bringing together multiple partners, with disparate objectives, to help design a future with a clear journey and the capability to create a seamless system for users.

To learn more about our collaborative approach, you can read about our work with:

• NHS Bath and Northeast Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire – ICB
• NHS South East London – ICS
• NHS Wales & Integrated Health and Social Care

Collaboration across complex health and social care landscapes requires a new way of thinking. Everyone supports the idea of ‘person-centred care’ creating positive outcomes, but system-level change and connected thinking need patients, peers and service users to play an active role in the design of future services.

Outcome-based health service design also needs to strike a balance between personalisation of care and minimising needless variations in practice, when resources are finite.

We have extensive experience supporting major change programmes, founded on collaboration and connected thinking, to deliver outcome-based healthcare models and services. We are expert facilitators of co-production events, with a range of stakeholders across health and social care. Our approach is proven to help organisations develop engagement with VCSE, peer and service user support groups to create patient-centred solutions.

If you’d like to learn more about our approach, you can read about our work with NHS Wales – Cardiff and Vale University Health Board to design a delivery approach for the implementation of its rehabilitation model.

Greater change is needed in the operating model and leadership behaviours needed for an Integrated Care System (ICS) or for a University Health Board (UHB) to succeed. An effective operating model will connect and support health and social care providers with the shared mission of improving services and the wellbeing of patients.

We have expertise in helping ICSs and UHBs to determine their vision and purpose, to design and embed the operating model needed to achieve strategic priorities. We have also helped NHS Digital to fundamentally redesign their structure and capability, in the context of rapid technological change.

Establishing integration and collaboration across a health and social care system is key to enabling ICS partners to make the improvements expected of the system. To do this, system leadership capabilities need to grow and be allowed to connect. We also help leaders understand their role as a system leader, connecting and embracing the challenge and differences of opinion. This results in better collaboration and innovation across organisational boundaries.

You can read more about how our experts have helped multiple organisations build this capability in NHS Wales and in SEL ICS.

Health and social systems globally are faced with the challenge of renewing and expanding their hospitals. This is to ensure long-term capacity to meet the demand and provision of facilities to meet quality and safety expectations. Planning and building hospitals, and associated clinical services, requires strong coordination to align policy-setting with the daily functioning of a facility.

We have partnered with health service providers to develop and deliver health infrastructure programmes. These are underpinned by robust governance that aligns strategic policy with programme delivery and drives future-focused strategic capital planning processes aligned to clinical strategies.

You can read more about how we partnered with the NHS in the creation of the New Hospitals Programme’s (NHP) target operating model, and supported the detailed design of key roles and teams to support this critical infrastructure project.