Annual Review 2017/18
Saving money through innovation
Innovation not only improves lives, but also saves the NHS money and frees up more resource for patient care. We identify innovations that save money and clinical time, and that respond to our member needs. You can read more about some of the innovations we spread in 2017/18 in our Improving Lives section.
Working with our members to save NHS resources:
Getting tomorrow’s talent into the NHS today, at a lower cost
The NHS struggles with entry level recruitment, while talented graduates aren’t always aware of non-clinical career opportunities. Graduates into Health (GiH) builds capacity and supports NHS providers with recruitment into business function teams, such as Project Management, Information Management, Finance and IT.
GiH teamed up with the Graduate Management Trainee Scheme to recruit talented graduates from their 20,000 annual pool that don’t make it on to one of their scarce 200 places.
GiH has recruited over 80 graduates across 30 trusts, commissioners, GP surgeries, third sector, and system wide organisations, offering an innovative time saving service. The programme has a 96% retention rate and saved over £340,300 in staff time.
A HR manager’s experience
Michelle had been recruiting for Band 4 full time and part time roles for 1 year fixed contracts within the Contracting and Transformation team. She required high analytical and problem solving skills as well as individuals who were naturally proactive. Michelle’s biggest challenge was finding the right skills at entry level Band 4 and 5 to fulfil the roles and stay in post. She said:
“The calibre of graduates is just brilliant. I can’t tell you how disappointing it is to be sat in interviews after shortlisting candidates who appear to have the right skills on paper but then not then evidenced at interview.
“We know that through the programme – we have the right skills at the right level, and they have proved to be real assets to the teams they have worked in.”
Michelle Rahman
HR Business Partner – Contracting Development at South East Commissioning Support Unit
Free or low-cost incentives to speed up adoption of proven innovations
The Innovation and Technology Tariff (ITT) is a two-year programme that launched in April 2017 to encourage the adoption of several evidence-based technologies and innovations. In 2017/18, the Patient Safety team worked with south London Trusts to implement seven new innovations at low or no cost, supporting them to save money and improve care. The innovations we focused on in 2017/18 were:
• Guided episiotomy EPISCISSORS-60 – Guided mediolateral scissors to minimise the risk of obstetric injury
• Safe arterial connector Non-injectable arterial connector (NIC) – Arterial connecting systems preventing the accidental administration of medication into an artery
• VAP prevention PneuX – Pneumonia prevention systems which are designed to stop ventilator-associated pneumonia
• Web based COPD rehab myCOPD – Web based application for the self-management of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
• Day case prostate surgery UroLift – Prostatic urethral lift systems to treat lower urinary tract symptoms of benign prostatic hyperplasia as a day case
Supporting member organisations with evaluation, analysis and training
In addition to spreading innovation that saves NHS resources, we support our members and partners with other areas such as training, analytics and evaluation. This helps to ensure well-run, evidence-based programmes and organisations that will make good use of taxpayer resources.
For example, our Leading and Managing Change across Boundaries programme brought together 20 aspiring leaders from different professions and organisations in 2017/18 to learn from senior leaders across the system, and to enhance their own personal effectiveness in readiness to take up these positions in the future. Examples of our analytics support in 2017/18 can be seen in King’s Health Partners published outcomes books; Liver, Renal Urology, Transplant, Gastroenterology and Gastrointestinal Surgery and Orthopaedics, Trauma and Plastics.