Community healthcare provider Bromley Healthcare has today announced it has recruited global supply chain consultancy Crimson & Co to undertake a full review of processes in order to drive greater efficiencies in its intensive at-home clinical service, the medical response team (MRT).
One of the biggest challenges facing the healthcare sector is the drain on resources inflicted by unnecessary hospital admissions. Industry research, as well as input from leading health professionals, suggests that up to one in 20 admissions are not needed. This places extra costs on the NHS, disrupts planned and elective procedures and has a serious impact on the quality of care being offered to patients.
The result is pressure on healthcare service providers such as Bromley Healthcare to maximise the efficiency and performance of services like those provided by MRT, which sends healthcare professionals out to visit patients in their homes.
As part of the agreement Crimson & Co consultants will work directly with the medical response team to identify critical processes throughout their day-to-day operations. From this, a high-level roadmap will be defined to help identify where efficiencies can be made. The aim is to reduce the amount of time on the road and maximise the time the clinician is spending with the patient.
“Unnecessary hospital admissions represent a continued strain on the NHS,” said Jonathan Lewis, Bromley Healthcare’s chief executive. “As a result healthcare service providers such as ourselves are absorbing the burden by seeing more and more patients at home.
“To ensure the services we are delivering are consistently of a high quality it is imperative we are continually evaluating the processes we have in place. This starts with how we collect information and extends to everything we do to maximise reliability and ensure our clinicians delivery a persistently high quality service to our patients.
“Tackling this requires a complete review of our processes so we turned to Crimson & Co for their expertise. We are excited about the opportunities this will afford and it is our community and the patients we serve who will reap the true benefits.”
“There is a clear preference amongst patients to be treated in familiar environments and to reduce the amount of time they spend in hospitals rather than at home,” said Dave Alberts, director at Crimson & Co. “In order to achieve this there is a greater emphasis placed on streamlining bureaucracy and paperwork, while maximising the time spent caring for the patient. Addressing issues in the supply chain is critical to identifying where these efficiencies can be made.
“It is refreshing to see a healthcare organisation taking such an open attitude towards external advice. In our initial conversations their willingness to absorb best practice and apply it to the service provided to patients was very clear. We are looking forward to continuing the relationship,” Alberts concluded.
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For further information and interviews, please contact:
Paul Moore/ Nick Bird
Spreckley Partners Ltd
T: +44 (0) 20 7388 9988
E: crimsonandco@spreckley.co.uk
Paula Larder or Robert Frampton
Bromley Healthcare
T:020 8315 8880
E: contact@bromleyhealthcare-cic.nhs.uk
Notes for editors:
About Bromley Healthcare
Bromley Healthcare was established in 2011 as an employee-owned social enterprise that ‘spun-out’ of the NHS. The organisation runs community health services in Bromley, Greenwich, Bexley, Croydon, Lewisham and Suffolk, providing a wide range of services to people of all ages. Services range from health visiting to district nursing, school nurses to specialist nurses, therapy services for adults and children, urgent care centres, services to help prevent hospital admissions and also facilitate early hospital discharge.
A leading provider for community health services operating in Bromley, Bexley, Croydon and Lewisham, Bromley Healthcare is a community interest company formed of over 800 people delivering high-quality NHS services, to people of all ages in the local community. Key to its success has been the emphasis it places on maximising best practice from both the private sector and the NHS.
For more information visit www.bromleyhealthcare.org.uk.
About Crimson & Co:
Crimson & Co is a global supply chain consultancy that thinks differently. It stands shoulder to shoulder with clients as it develops outstanding supply chains, using deep operational experience and broad-based business skills to challenge, guide and implement. Its strength is its consulting team, which it nurtures with care, and it has an approach and culture that its clients believe is unique. The company was founded in 2003 as a breakaway from one of the major consultancies and its scope spans supply chain strategy, planning, procurement, manufacturing, logistics and customer channels. It operates on all continents, with offices in London, Atlanta, Mumbai, Melbourne, São Paulo and Singapore, and typical clients are blue-chip organisations such as Sony, Diageo, Carlsberg, BAT, GSK, Tesco and Merck.
For more information, please see: www.crimsonandco.com