NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS) has developed a long-term collaboration with Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care System to provide ICS-wide corporate services.
The partnership will see NHS SBS provide integrated procurement and finances services to five trusts throughout Norfolk and Waveney ICS over the next ten years.
The collaboration highlights how individual organisations can join together to achieve a system-wide benefit for the local population.
NHS SBS facilitated the initiative to create a unique Insight Diagnostic Solution, to benchmark current procurement and finance tasks across the individual organisations against industry best practice and national requirements.
This solution, providing detailed analysis, will identify where improvements can be made and how investments should be targeted, supporting informed decision making.
At Norfolk and Waveney ICS, the evaluation found potential for system-wide improvements and identified savings of £7.3 million on operational expenditure over the next ten years. A Procure-to-Pay service was subsequently launched and has established value for money and a best practice ICS blueprint in standardising procurement and finance.
Stephen Beeson, Deputy Director of Finance at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and ICS Programme Lead, stated: “The efficiencies and cost savings that come from this partnership will undoubtedly benefit the ICS, but equally important is moving to a futureproofed shared service that, from a technology perspective, provides additional benefits – so we don’t move to a new platform and stand still.
“Having a standardised system means we can also get on the front foot when it comes to reporting as an ICS – looking at things horizontally as well as vertically and enabling new levels of automation for things like national reporting.”
Erika Bannerman, Managing Director at NHS SBS, added: “High-quality, consistent and value-for-money corporate services, which can also be tailored for a specific ICS, ensure enhanced reporting via real time data across organisational boundaries, and deliver substantial efficiency and productivity savings – time and money that can be redirected to frontline care.”
