New Model for Commissioning and Population Health

The Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership (GMHSCP) is made up of local NHS organisations and councils, as well as NHS England, emergency services, the voluntary sector, and the mayor of Greater Manchester. The Partnership is responsible for delivering the health and social care needs of the region and improving the way it spends public health money.

GMHSCP underwent a significant period of change along with a 20% reduction in their staff back-office staffing budget driven by national policy. This required its teams to adapt to meet demanding and challenging circumstances. This resulted in an urgent need to examine the current working methods and model and to understand where new ways of working could be adopted. The primary driver was to increase cross-team working and to create greater resilience.

AI Digital were approached by the GMHSP via the Unity Partnership to provide:

  • A baseline and understanding of current processes and ways of working
  • Clarity on the must do’s and the nice to haves
  • Inform the development of a cross-functional, future proof operating model which could align to the new structure

The Brief

Working with the Unity Partnership, AI Digital conducted a review of existing processes within the GMHSCP’s existing service operating model, to determine where substantive improvement work could be achieved, through applying lean process redesign techniques and reallocating existing working patterns. The fundamental driver for this work was to ensure that Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership are able to deliver its services even more efficiently and to remove or mitigate any areas of risk or single points of failure.

The Approach

AI Digital has a strong track record in the delivery of process redesign and change initiatives, particularly within the health sector. Our Advanced Lean Practitioner and Project Manager worked alongside Unity Partnership to undertake a thorough Lean process review. By working closely with 30+ GMHSCP stakeholders we were able to understand the strengths of the current ways of operating, and also the opportunities for capacity release and how teams could work in a cross-functional way.

AI Digitals Lean review approach required the client and consultants to work closely for the duration of the work.

The Result

Unity Partnership and AI Digital worked well together, and collaboratively took GMHSCP on the first steps of a transformational journey, identifying pain points and appropriate solutions. Unity’s trusted engagement at a senior management level, provided an appropriate level of assurance to GMHSP, while AI Digital were able to focus on operational issues and solutions.

AI Digital and Unity were able to present GMHSCP with a solution together with an implementation approach, which included a number of delivery options. The outcome of which would allow GMHSCP to have the right people in the right place to deliver the best services for colleagues, localities and the population. This enabled GHMSP to:

  • Prepare for the integrated strategic commissioning model
  • Provide for broader roles across the full portfolio e.g. nurse consultant screening & immunizations
  • Create a single team to enable a full Joint Commissioning Team integration and reduce duplication
  • Provide better integration across pathways e.g. cancer
  • Deliver economies of scale and efficiencies
  • Provide greater resilience for workforce cover
  • Create greater job opportunities and job satisfaction
  • Provide an improved line of sight for Direct Commissioning services from CCG

This project explored and designed how GMHSCP could move to a matrix operating model which share skills and knowledge and migrate to more structured pipelines of work and utilises project teams wrapped around organisations priorities tied into performance management.

‘We were really pleased to work alongside AI Digital on this important piece of work. They provided some excellent capability to enhance our own internal resources and I was very impressed with the way they operated and helped to successfully deliver against the contract requirements’

-Dominic Whelan, Chief Operating Officer Unity Partnership Ltd