Acute provider collaborative

About the collaborative

The South West London Acute Provider Collaborative, is a partnership between the 4 acute NHS trusts in South West London:

• St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust
• Croydon Health Services NHS Trust
• Kingston Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

The collaborative aims to:

• improve clinical outcomes, inequalities and unwarranted variation for patients
• improve workforce health and wellbeing, making South West London the best place to work
• deliver top 10% performance in quality, efficiency, and national standards
• deliver value for money to local people and sustainability to our NHS trusts
• use innovation and research to improve productivity

The collaborative is focused on making improvements across three key areas:

• formal partnerships
• corporate programmes
• elective programmes

Formal partnerships

Recruitment

The Recruitment Hub, set up in 2020, is a collaborative service that handles the large majority of recruitment for the NHS trusts in South West London.

Visit the Recruitment Hub

Orthopaedics

The South West London Elective Orthopaedic Centre is based at Epsom Hospital and carries out around than 6300 orthopaedic procedures every year. It is one of the oldest and most established collaborations in South West London.

More about South West London Elective Orthopaedic Centre

Procurement

The South West London Procurement Partnership is a joint procurement service, which looks at how costs can be reduced and efficiencies can be found when NHS trusts buy goods and services.

More about the procurement partnership

Pathology

The South West London Pathology Network provides a single, integrated pathology service across South West London and beyond.

More about the South West London Pathology Network

Corporate programmes

Pharmacy

The pharmacy team identifies opportunities for collaboration in transforming the way that medicines are managed and prescribed.

Our system Joint Formulary Committee and NetFormulary were established in 2022.

The single formulary has created a standard practice for prescribing across South West London, which means that everyone has access to the same medicines, no matter where they live.

Visit the NetFormulary

Workforce

The workforce programme aims to provide a modern digital occupational health service to NHS hospital staff, and some non-hospital services, by bringing both records and teams from participating trusts into one main hub.

This will help provide sustainability for staff and NHS trusts in South West London.

Elective programmes

Clinical networks

Clinical networks aim to reduce costs and improve quality throughout the patient journey from primary through to specialist care.

This includes promoting the best use of diagnostics and introducing more preventative measures to help ensure that patients are seen and treated as quickly as possible.

Elective recovery

The elective recovery programme aims to maximise the number of patients treated in South West London, reduce the number of long-waiting patients, and ensure that services are sustainable.

Outpatients

The outpatients programme is helping to introduce a more standardised experience in outpatient services to improve the care provided for patients in South West London.

Diagnostics

The diagnostics programme aims to improve care for patients and reduce health inequalities and unwanted variation.

The programme is helping to reduce the time it takes to diagnose illness, and make the patient journey between different services more efficient.

2023/24 priorities

Delivery

• Operating plan: Maximising the number of patients treated and reducing the number of long waiting patients.
• Maximising then number of patients receiving diagnostics and reducing the number of patients waiting more than 6 weeks.
• Supporting delivery of activity and performance objectives as agreed by the ICS and NHSE/I.
• Integrated approach to performance improvement with system established productivity framework.
• Clinical networks: To support maximising productivity across the whole pathway from prevention through to discharge.
• Ongoing delivery of our formal partnerships’ business plans.

Transformation

• Establish shared approach to non admitted care with a particular lens on advice and refer/single point of access and effective use of system resources.
• Single streamlined occupational health service to all participating within the shared service.
• Continue to drive the implementation of advice and refer and patient initiated follow up in the outpatient pathway to optimise care in clinical settings.
• Mobilisation of 3 additional community diagnostic centres across South West London and optimising patient pathways through redesign.
• Establishing an imaging network to optimise the service provision and maximise capacity.
• Implementation of hub and spoke model for system procurement and distribution of agreed aseptics medicinal products.

Strategic

• Develop the workplan based on the principles of our elective strategy to facilitate a more equitable and sustainable delivery of care to our patients across South West London, reviewing fragile services.
• Use the outputs of the South West London financial sustainability strategy to further collaborate across the acute providers to deliver sustainability within the next 3 years.
• To align the workforce strategy with the ICB people strategy. Develop new roles and explore shared workforce across challenged areas whilst continuing to improve current collaborations in our Recruitment Hub.
• Deliver the pathology strategy to become a NHSE/I ‘thriving’ ranked network and expanding our partnership.
• Develop on the vision for the provision of aseptics services to outline the pharmacy strategy, aligning with the London Aseptics Group and ICS medicines management strategy.