Value in Healthcare Awards: Best Value for Patients and Tax Payers

Value in Healthcare Awards winners for 2015

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In association with Future Focused Finance in Partnership with Bain and Company

Salford Royal Foundation Trust: Meeting the 20:20 vision for pathology provision in Salford and Wigan (PAWS)

The judges said: “This award goes to a complex programme of work, which required significant levels of leadership, energy and commitment to implement. A clear business case, with improvement trajectories for cost, performance and quality measures, accompanied by comprehensive benchmarking, meant that Salford and Wigan were able to deliver significant cost savings and quality improvements at scale.”

Although not at the front end of care delivery, the judges felt that this work demonstrated what the NHS at its best can deliver with a clear value framework, strong engagement with staff and service users, and great partnerships. Pathology at Wigan and Salford offers a blueprint for the rest of the NHS to follow in driving down costs and raising the quality bar.

Launched in 2012 the service was formed following the merger of pathology services in Salford Royal FT and Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh FT. The PAWS team aim to improve the quality, delivery and consistency of pathology services while also achieving savings.

Existing laboratories at Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh were deemed not fit for purpose and so a new single blood sciences lab was designed by staff which allowed for an integrated laboratory and workforce.

This lab was designed to deliver a truly integrated multidisciplinary approach to working; it had to allow staff to rotate across boundaries and also deliver the required cost savings.

In January 2015 the final stage of the merger and move to the new lab took place. As a result of this turnaround times have been reduced and service improvements have been made in line with national guidelines.

Following research carried out by Keele University it was found the in all but biochemistry, PAWS cost per test/request was the lowest compared to the overall average for NHS pathology services.

Sponsor profile: Future Focused Finance in partnership with Bain and Company

In February 2014, the six heads of the finance profession in the NHS came together to initiate Future-Focused Finance (FFF).

Future-Focused Finance is about “Making People Count” by ensuring that everyone connected with NHS finance has access to the relevant skills, methods and opportunities to influence decision making in support of the provision of high quality patient services. It offers a vision for NHS finance to aspire to over the next five years.

That includes everyone who works in finance, in every role at every level, those we work with to deliver services and the patients and communities that use and support those services.

To deliver the transformation required to bring about the vision, work is being undertaken around three strategic themes: Securing Excellence, Knowing the Business and Fulfilling Our Potential. Each strategic theme supports two action areas which have their own programme of projects. These are: