Reference no: EM133353018

NHS case study

The NHS is a state-run national healthcare service and its total health spending in England was around £129 billion in 2018/19. £70 billion of this spend was allocated to procurement.

As a publicly funded body, NHS England employs over 6,000 people directly and is responsible for eight Commissioning Support Units (CSUs) employing over 10,000 staff ("CIPS," NHS England). The role of the CSUs is to 'enable clinical commissioners to focus their clinical expertise and leadership in securing the best outcomes for patients and driving up quality of NHS patient services' ("CSUs," NHS England). The Units oversee the delivery of complex supply chains of non-clinical and local services including IT, HR, and business intelligence. These are provided for internal customers that include Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), Acute Trusts, NHS England, and local government. In addition to providing integrated business support services, the CSUs work in partnership with NHS England's external stakeholders in acute and community health. As well as social care providers to develop and innovate data intelligence, clinical pathway design, patient experience initiatives and patient information campaigns ("CSUs", NHS England).

The key to the success of the Commissioning Units is their ability, in a period of acute resource constraint, to effectively manage a complex and evolving set of internal and external supplier relationships. To circumvent 'dysfunctional master-servant relationships,' the CSUs are expected to build effective relationships through co-design, co-delivery, and coordination of resources to collectively improve health and healthcare. These services need to be delivered flexibly, responsively, and an anticipation of unforeseen changes in demand and needs from local Trusts.

Primary care co-commissioning is one of a series of prioritized changes set out in the NHS Five Year Forward View. It gives CCGs an opportunity to take on greater responsibility for general practice commissioning. It was introduced to support the development of integrated out-of-hospital services, based around the needs of local people ("Five Year Forward View," NHS England).

The Commercial Team is one relatively small part of the supply and purchasing function of NHS England. 'With around 65 members - it is responsible for the governance of that spend. It also supports NHS England staff with planning their procurement pipelines, leading the procurement process, and providing contract management and supplier relationship support to achieve best value and quality. The team's greatest focus and challenge is to ensure compliant procurement practice and best-in-class commercial behaviours. They are leading a shift in activity towards robust contract management and the use of purchase orders, which were previously only used for half of all spend. This is being driven by the implementation of electronic tools, stakeholder engagement, including nationwide workshops and training sessions, and support from the Commercial Team's business partners' ("CIPS," NHS England)

to complete this assignment.

1. Create groups of 2-5 following your instructor's guidance.

2. Read the case study: The Triple Bottom Line: Gaining a competitive Edge.

3. Discuss and review the case study with your group - share thoughts and ideas.

4. During At-Home Learning, individually answer the following questions (250 words for each question) about the case study:

a. When conducting its cost analysis of the potential outsourcing opportunity, what are five costs Loget would have investigated?

b. Loget chose to use an outsourcing service. Describe the process to follow when comparing the cost of outsourcing a service to that of keeping the service local or in-house.

c. When Loget's outsourcing investigation is complete and it hires a supplier, it will need to incorporate the outsourcing of its brakes into the TBL statement. What are three measures you would recommend it use to do this? (For example, the company could use

X percent retention rate of employees at the supplier's factory and combine it with its own.)

5. Submit your finished work in Brightspace on Day 3 to the Assignment Submission Folder: Case Study Analysis 1 - Triple Bottom Line: Gaining a Competitive Edge.

6. Rubric for the case study analysis can be found here: Case Study Analysis 1 - Triple Bottom Line: Gaining a Competitive.