Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership

Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership

Greater Manchester Orthopaedics Project

Briefly describe the initiative/ project/service; please include your aims and objectives

A regional procurement programme was created by the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership (GMHSCP) in February 2018. One key area of work was the Orthopaedics care project as outlined below.

GMHSCP has led the strategy to reset the Orthopaedics market across GM to ensure it successfully delivers the requirements for today, tomorrow and the future. The strategy was a multi-dimensional project requiring extensive stakeholder engagement and collaboration.

1. To achieve in-year savings through contract harmonisation and demand aggregation via SCCL new operating model. Historically GM contracts were trust-level focussed – resulting with varied end dates, differing prices and un-coordinated strategies.
2. To embed pan-GM collaboration through supporting standardisation and sharing of best practices. Despite trusts using the same suppliers, extensive product variation existed across GM. Also, each trust had different practices.
3. To establish the foundations to support the GM Orthopaedics 5-Year plan for a new model of care. Through establishing good practices and collaborative work across GM now, the groundwork is being prepared to enable a quicker uptake and implementation of new ways of working.

What are the key achievements?

This first phase of in-year savings is delivering £1.3m savings (2019/20), equivalent to £2.3m over a full 12 months. This has been primarily achieved through four of the six GM trusts collaborating to aggregate demand for high spend areas (hip, knee and trauma) with common suppliers. Phase two of in-year savings will see an estimated further >£1m annual savings be delivered from April 2020.

Additional benefits include:
• Strategy established within two months with implementation started and continuing
• Product standardisation discussions started
• Sharing of best practices across GM
• Foundations established to facilitate the new model of care.

The overall outcome has given both NHS and its patients significant in-year savings to better support opportunities for improved care. GM trusts will see greater service improvement and efficiencies through on-going standardisation of products and processes, which will lead to further savings. The GM Orthopaedics new model of care will give an improved service using a smaller range of products, enabling further savings to be achieved in the future.

The project is being recognised as an example for other regions to follow and would be a worthy winner of this award.

What are the key learning points?

Although this was a NHS focused initiative the model and key learning is replicable across the wider public sector. Although collaboration is talked out repeatedly it often fails to deliver. In this case delivery has been successful thought the following key factors:

Clear governance: Roles and responsibilities need to be agreed early with clear escalation paths for when conflict occurs (and it will occur!). Routes to Directors of Finance and other key stakeholders ensured success.

Dedicated resources: This can’t be part of somebody’s day job. There must be dedicated full time resources to make this work. These resources also reported directly to the board for accountability.

Clear Communications: There was regular communications to the various stakeholders and they felt part of the process. This was key to ensure buy in to the final specifications.

Expertise: With this being such a specialised area it was vital that those using the products with the right expertise where involved and included all at stages, especially around decision making.