NHS England Solutions

As medicines advance, health needs change and society develops, the NHS has to continually move forward. With national responsibility for leading the health service and delivering the Long Term Plan, NHS England drives this journey and also works regionally to support system transformation and develop integrated care.

At Arden & GEM, we are pleased to support NHS England in their delivery at both a national and regional level. We provide national business intelligence, strategic procurement and commercial solutions to enable effective direct and specialised commissioning. We work nationally in transformation programmes such as provider digitisation and elective care to test, capture, evaluate and share new approaches to transforming healthcare delivery.

Our partnership work with NHS England has been recognised by a number of industry award schemes including the HSJ Value Awards and CIPS Supply Management Awards.

Business Intelligence

In order to make appropriate planning and commissioning decisions on specialised services, NHS England needs insightful data and intelligence. Our business intelligence team has supported this by working with NHS England to develop the National Commissioning Data Repository (NCDR). By linking data at a patient level, the system provides the infrastructure to support joined up planning and performance management across STP footprints. To date, the NCDR has been used to identify and deliver efficiency and savings within specialised commissioning and is a vital tool in managing contracts against budgets and intended outcomes.

Our solutions span a range of high profile areas, for example our business intelligence experts (working closely with clinicians) created a national patient registry and treatment outcome system for hepatitis C (HCV). The only one of its kind in the world, the application is a pivotal information system, supporting the interaction of all agencies involved in the diagnosis, treatment, monitoring and cure of patients with hepatitis C in England.

With the move towards place-based care and shared commissioning for specialised services, we are supporting NHS England to make best use of advanced data collection and analysis tools that combine financial and operational reporting together with clinical and patient reported outcomes.

Strategic procurement and commercial solutions

Arden & GEM has been coordinating procurement support for directly commissioned services since March 2015. We have worked with our CSU partners to develop a single operating model, making it easier for NHS England to access services and maximise the expertise and resources available. This approach has enabled us to identify contracts at both a regional and national level which could be aggregated into fewer procurement projects to achieve better economies of scale.

We are regularly asked to manage highly complex and sensitive procurements, in partnership with Specialised Services, to deliver low volume, high value services and treatments including Proton Beam Therapy, hepatitis C and High Consequence Infectious Diseases. 

Digital transformation

The GDE programme aims to accelerate digitisation across the NHS, to improve care quality and outcomes, by investing in selected digitally advanced sites. Arden & GEM has supported the programme, since its inception, providing an initial baseline evaluation to ensure a clear path was mapped for replication and then developing and facilitating a learning network to enable information and experiences to be transferred between the sites and across the wider health system. We continue to work in partnership with the University of Edinburgh on the full programme evaluation to support the NHS to take full advantage of the benefits associated with health information technology.

In addition to supporting provider digitisation, our service transformation experts are also working with local health economies to assess and develop place-based digital maturity. We recently led a programme of qualitative research and analysis to understand digital strategy, leadership and architecture in the Midlands and East of England to support the future development of a regional Local Health and Care Record (LHCR).

Managing change

Delivering new models of care and service transformation on a national scale presents exciting opportunities to radically improve patient care and deliver more sustainable services to meet long term demands. We have used our proven change model and expertise in running Programme Management Offices (PMO) to successfully support NHS England change programmes, including NHS RightCare and the Elective Care Transformation Programme. With a robust approach to governance and an inclusive approach to engagement, our PMO capability is able to work within challenging timescales and manage competing demands.

To ensure that change programmes are informed by the needs and intelligence of all stakeholders, including seldom heard groups, our communication experts have successfully supported a range of engagement activities on services from dental to nursing. This has included interviews with patients, clinicians, organisations and interest groups, at both a national and regional level.

Where additional capacity or capability is needed to deliver a programme of work, we have developed a pool of flexible resource that can be deployed to meet specific project need.

Clinical support

Providing clinical support across multiple NHS England regions delivers scale economies, effective processes and access to a range of best practice.

Our Medicines Optimisation specialists support the statutory NHS England Controlled Drugs Accountable Officer function across the West Midlands and East of England. This ensures the safe management and use of controlled drugs by responding to incidents, completing authorised witness destructions for community pharmacies and GP practices, and providing support to wider stakeholders including the police, General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) and counter fraud specialists. We also deliver a range of network-wide events which drive collaboration and shared learning across a variety of organisations including NHS England, CCGs, local trusts, CQC, GPhC, hospices, police, counter fraud and ambulance services (including international air alliance).

Our work also includes supporting NHS England with quality assurance visits that deliver reporting and recommendations for the health and justice sector. Structured inspections within the prison service ensure the effective management of controlled drugs in line with regulations and policies.