Post conference Workshop

Understanding the Department of Health’s commitment to achieving savings and efficiencies through shared services

• Examining the support available from the Department of Health to help organisations’ transition to shared services
• Exploring the business case for Shared Services and outsourcing: what savings are possible?
• Ensuring good governance in shared services across robust partnerships, with clear communication and transparency
  

Question and answer session

Ensuring collaborative procurement drives quality and value for money

• Driving value for money from economies of scale and maximising the buying power of the NHS
• Understanding how collaborative procurement fits into the new commercial landscape of the NHS
• Using a collaborative approach to drive innovative and cost-effective solutions
  

Improving efficiency and savings through shared finance and accounting services

• Joining up the information from shared financial services to improve decision making through detailed, accurate and timely management information
• Ensuring financial ledger information is up to date and well maintained 
• Improving cash flow by reducing outstanding sales and minimising exposure to bad debts 
• Optimising your partnership: Using the best of public and private skills to provide world-class finance and accounting services for the NHS
• Improving the reporting capability of NHS organisations to help finance teams, commissioners and clinicians to better understand the costs of services and improve quality
  

Question and answer session

Morning refreshments

Examining best practice in Human Resources shared services

• Understanding how shared HR services can improve efficiency and provide a better service to staff and patients
• Improving the capacity and flexibility of HR teams by maximising resources through shared services
• Exploring the technology requirements to support shared HR services
  

Examining shared commissioning models

• Exploring the benefits of shared services in commissioning - joining up informatics, information, intelligence, and performance reporting  to support commissioning
• Understanding the savings and increased capacity of the joined up system 
• Using information intelligently to identify areas for improvement and better allocating resources to improve outcomes
  

Question and answer session

Lunch

Embedding effective change management to prepare your organisation and workforce for shared services

• Exploring the impact shared services has on NHS organisations including the transfer of staff, redundancies and redeployment
• Identifying who will be affected by change and prioritising meaningful consultation at an early stage of the planning process
• Designing and implementing your change management programme and defining the desired outcomes
  

Panel Discussion

As the recommendation to use shared services has come from the very top of the NHS, how should the NHS move forward to achieve savings and efficiencies from shared services? Where can shared services achieve the greatest savings, and when are they appropriate? Understanding when in house services are no longer efficient, and understanding some of the governance implications of outsourcing – when are regional arrangements appropriate, and when can you outsource internationally?

Chair’s closing remarks

Close of conference