Enhancing collaboration between NHS trusts is a core target in the UK government’s 10-year plan. To facilitate these cross-trust partnerships, organizations must balance conflicting priorities, set firm strategic foundations, and invest in centralized collaboration tools.
The UK government’s ambitious 10-year NHS plan outlines a future of efficient, interconnected healthcare experiences. The goal is big yet simple: patients should be able to receive excellent care quickly, efficiently, and close to home — as standard.
Enhancing collaboration between neighboring NHS Trusts and local service providers is key to turning this dream into a reality and scaling current integrated care systems (ICSs).
But this is by no means a simple task.
In this article, we’ll help your NHS organization lay the groundworks for future collaboration, both strategically and technologically.
As the saying goes: “many hands make light work”. When orchestrated effectively, collaboration can lead to enhanced patient outcomes, increased staff engagement, and more efficient resource management.
You don’t need to look too far to find proof of this.
Take the South London Mental Health and Community Partnership as an overwhelming success story. In 2016, three separate NHS trusts banded together in a bid to improve mental health services and community outreach across South London’s large population. According to NHSProviders, the partnership consists of: “a commissioning hub to manage contracts across the network, a single point of access for service users, and a shared capacity strategy and quality improvement programme.”
Since launch, the collaborative has achieved a 36% reduction in out-of-area patients — with the average distance dropping from 73 miles to 7 — a 93% reduction in out-of-area bed use, and a 66% reduction in readmissions.
Integrated care systems and provider collaboratives are steadily on the rise in the NHS. However, despite growing numbers, challenges still remain.
Indeed, 86% of provider collaboratives cite “relationship building” as a key priority moving forward. While 76% identify “addressing unwarranted variations in care” as another top focus area.
With partnerships set to rise under the 10-year plan, NHS organizations must work towards building resilience and filling these gaps as soon as possible. In the following 5 tips, we’ll help you plan for short-term and long-term collaborations with neighboring trusts, service providers, and local authorities:
NHS trusts might share the same blue logo and scrubs, but that's often where their similarities end. Acute, mental health, community, and ambulance trusts all deliver fundamentally different services. And granular variations in their operations, focus areas, and team structures only set them further apart.
Simply put, the NHS is an incredibly diverse healthcare system. So building partnerships isn’t as simple as sticking two trusts together and hoping they’ll gel in time.
To pave the way for successful, ongoing collaboration, you must build the right foundations first. This requires careful, strategic planning:
Your partnership will never find its feet unless your staff and clinicians are fully invested in it. After all, these are the people who will ultimately implement the strategy and shape its design. Without their support, your partnership will crumble.
It’s the duty of your clinical leadership teams, board members, and executives to get this buy in.
Hosting group meetings and Q&A sessions is a great starting point. Stakeholders can present their business case for the partnership, highlight the overarching goal and anticipated benefits, reference relevant NHS success stories, and then open the floor for two-way discussion. This gives clinicians a chance to voice their fears and raise concerns — some of which your planning teams may not have even considered.
Going forward, we’d recommend including these clinicians in the design and implementation process. When staff have ownership of the project, they’re more likely to buy into it.
As stated earlier, almost three-quarters of provider collaboratives hint at unwarranted care variations within their systems. These inconsistencies don’t just undermine your partnerships — they can severely impact patient trust and, most importantly, their healthcare outcomes.
To ensure replicable, high quality care across your territory, create SOPs, service manuals, and step-by-step processes (such as assessment checklists or patient registration forms) that standardize your operations. Ensure these resources are easily accessible, up-to-date, and supported by effective clinician training.
At its core, collaboration relies on clear communication and reliable information sharing. This can be difficult to orchestrate across disparate NHS trusts, particularly if you rely on paper-based communications or disconnected comms tools.
To avoid miscommunications, duplicated patient files, and outdated documents, you need to bring your teams together in a centralized digital workplace. These mobile-accessible solutions unify every corner of your operations and communications, in turn breaking down data silos, fragmented operations, and cross-site disconnect.
When choosing a digital workplace, prioritize a solution that contains the following features:
It goes without saying, but we’ll say it anyway: security must be a top factor when choosing a vendor.
Your shortlisted digital workplace providers must align with your regulatory requirements and data protection standards. So prioritize vendors that boast on-premise deployments, watertight security features, compliance-forward applications, ISO certifications, and healthcare-related track records.
As the NHS say themselves: “collaboration is a process, not a quick fix.” Your cross-trust initiatives will take time to perfect. So it’s important to take stock as you go and make data-driven refinements when needed.
Start by consolidating data points from across your services, systems, processes, and training in one singular digital workplace. From there, build real-time dashboards that display partnership-wide and trust-specific insights. This allows you to analyze performance granularly, track KPI progress, and identify areas that require improvement. Monitor these metrics on a regular basis and adapt your partnership model when appropriate.
In addition to this, create mechanisms for collecting staff and clinician feedback. Focus groups and anonymous surveys can help you identify challenges in your operations and highlight bottlenecks you didn’t know existed.
The NHS is already under immense pressure to improve service delivery and enhance patient outcomes, all while bearing the weight of funding cuts and staffing shortages. Collaboration between trusts shouldn’t add to these burdens; it should alleviate them.
A solid strategy that clinicians can buy into is crucial for getting these partnerships off on the right foot. But it’s the technical foundations that ensure their longevity.
A comprehensive digital workplace solution like Claromentis is the perfect springboard for these collaboratives. Available on-premise or in the cloud, our AI-powered solution unifies every aspect of your programs, including your disparate teams, processes, documents, communications, data, projects, policies and training. This means your office-based and frontline teams can access the information they need at speed, contact team members seamlessly, and follow your new initiatives consistently and compliantly.
As a HIPAA compliant and ISO 27001:2022 certified vendor with a wealth of experience in the healthcare industry, we’re well positioned to aid your NHS trust’s digital transformation efforts — whether you’re looking to build innovative partnerships or streamline staff workloads. To find out more about our secure digital workplace solution, schedule a quick requirements call with one of our experts.