AdviseInc, Efficio and Humber & North Yorkshire Procurement Collaborative

The Challenge

In response to the national strategy around ICS working, which is now an objective of the NHS England “Strategic Framework for NHS Commercial”, Hull University Teaching Hospitals, Northern Lincolnshire & Goole and York & Scarborough Teaching Hospitals set an objective of establishing a single procurement function across all three trusts.

Humber & North Yorkshire Procurement Collaborative (HNYPC) supports the sustainable provision of clinical and non-clinical services for eight hospitals. The function aims to move beyond cost-down and to incentivise procurement to deliver value across the organisation. Achieving this required coordinating and combining the activity and work of each procurement team into a single unit (~134 FTEs) as well as standardising the surrounding governance and systems across the trusts.

HNYPC’s savings target was set at ~£50m over a five-year period based on increased volume leverage, optimised workforce spend and other synergies arising from the collaboration. Efficio and Adviselnc were contracted as partners to support HNYPC in reaching this target. Two initiatives were focused on supporting savings realisation and value creation plans, including supporting the savings target for medical and non-medical spend and driving collaboration within the organisation. With Wave 1 of support underway, nine savings initiatives have already been delivered, and a further eighteen are in progress. Following the success of the initial phase, Wave 2 will commence in 2025, including initiatives to further support the procurement transformation while continuing to deliver value across the collaborative.

Why AdviseInc & Efficio

Strategic partners that deliver transformation!

As partners in supporting the transformation, we delivered:

• A single view of spend and pipelining opportunities: using the only UK-wide healthcare spend analytics tool and their sector-specific knowledge, Adviseine built a single picture of spend across all trusts, building on insights from 150 NHS trusts to support the structuring and categorising of spend data. This enabled Efficio to identify and pipeline savings opportunities with momentum and accuracy through clinical variation and price analysis, allowing them to have effective, facts-based conversations with suppliers and users.
• Rapid savings delivery: Efficio drove efficiency and rapid savings delivery by using Adviselnc’s advanced analytics Platform, which includes benchmarking and comparable products, to bring data together with delivery to quickly drive value in the Business Partnering team.
• Deep expertise in NHS clinical procurement: Powered by Efficio’s in-depth knowledge of categories and Adviselnc’s analytics and proprietary clinical classification tool, the partnership performed variation analysis on all products, enabling HNYPC to identify, realign and standardise pricing across trusts.
• Strong and sustainable acumen in process improvement and change management: By utilising Adviselnc’s analytics platform, reporting and processes were further standardised between the trusts, which Efficio used as a springboard to set up and deliver bespoke analysis, digital transformation, and governance. This created sustainable processes for the team to support their procurement activities.
• Public sector expertise: Supported as a trusted advisor to HNYPC to enhance delivery, from acumen in healthcare-specific spend analytics to a deep understanding of the pressures faced by the NHS and government. We’re the partners of choice across many Public Sector organisations.

The Result

• By implementing Adviselnc’s platform, spend data was structured, allowing HNYPC to identify opportunities through quarterly opportunity reports and benchmarking analytics readily available on Adviselnc Platform.
• Efficio and Adviselnc have already delivered £ 800k in savings, from contract renegotiation for clinical consumables, energy devices and reimbursement for HCTED/SSDP – with another £600k in review. Eighteen additional initiatives are in progress with £3-5m in savings estimated, such as aggregating spend across the HNYPC to achieve competitive prices for wound care products within formularies across the three trusts. Regular refresh of the opportunity pipeline, including prioritisation and scoping of new initiatives, has also been planned.
• Efficio and Adviselnc have worked closely with Edd and his team to guide and drive the transformation, supporting the newly appointed Business Partners in delivering savings and sustainable transformative change.

The Conclusion

As a new collaboration of three existing trust-based teams it was important to get the right help and support in delivering quick-wins to prove the concept. The team of Efficio and Adviselnc has allowed us to change the narrative we have with our stakeholders and to deliver benefits at pace. We selected Efficio as we were not after a scoping report but hands-on commercial support to accelerate existing work packages, enabled by Adviselnc’s Insights.

Edd James, Director of Procurement