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Senior communications and engagement professional. Dynamic, problem solver, writer and planner. Down-to-earth realist with an irrepressible sense of humour. And a slight yoga obsession.
Take a look at this report, co-written by us at Ethical Healthcare Consulting - some really useful info in here about challenges facing the NHS with the expectation vs reality of the digital agenda:
We have teamed up with @Ethicalhealthuk to publish a new report ‘Frontline digitisation: creating the conditions for a digital NHS’ highlighting the issues faced by ICBs in implementing digital programs across the NHS. The report details what the NHS needs to make this work in the long-term including:
- fewer core targets
- flexibility
- quality training and support for staff
- more capital funding for digital infrastructure
- longer-term, multi-year funding cycles.
🚨 The NHS 10-Year Plan Has Landed 🚨
A bold vision for a reimagined, digitally empowered NHS has just been unveiled. The plan "Fit for the Future" is promising transformational digital change and a shift towards more community-driven care.
Holly Gibson, Partner at Price Bailey and Head of Healthcare welcomed the plan, but asks how will all of this be funded, saying:
"The 10-year plan is out……. It's exciting to see such a comprehensive strategy aimed at driving care into the community and accelerating the NHS into the new digital age. There is certainly a lot to get stuck into!
Notably, the plan mentions two new contracts that are set to be introduced from 2026. I’m hopeful that these will be well thought out with proper consultation from those on the ground. It’s vital that these contracts are more meticulously planned than the somewhat rushed introduction of the Primary Care Networks (PCNs) we experienced in 2019. However, I must say, it’s a tad concerning that the first applications for the Neighbourhood initiatives are due by early August 2025. This tight deadline may pose challenges similar to those we faced with the PCNs.
While the plan promises significant changes, it leaves a critical question unanswered: how will all of this be funded? The financial aspect is crucial for the successful implementation of these ambitious goals."
#NHS#10YearPlan#FitForTheFuture
NHS England is planning a £150m-plus commercial engagement through which a supplier will provide support for greater “personalisation” of digital services.
Story ⬇️
NHS England is planning a £150m-plus commercial engagement through which a supplier will provide support for greater “personalisation” of digital services.
Story ⬇️
Our recent paper on NHS financial data: Nonlinear Rank Scaling and Hidden Structure in NHS Expenditure Transparency Data. https://lnkd.in/evXUpcAN
We’re currently considering journals, so any comments or feedback are very welcome.
The NHS publishes open financial data, but only for transactions above £25,000. When transparency thresholds are this high, a large volume of lower value transactions (many of which account for a significant share of overall activity) are excluded from public view.
While transparency is meant to provide visibility, these thresholds can obscure important patterns and prevent a full picture of public finances. Our work shows how statistical analysis of the available data reveals hidden structure in public sector spending.
It’s important we get this right—transparency supports more accountable and effective public finance.
#NHS#Finance#Transparancy#StatisticalModelling#UniversityofDerby#DerbyUni
Our paper looking at transparancy and NHS finances has been uploaded to Arxiv. For a variety of reasons we have decided to do this a little in advance of peer reviewed journal submission.
Any comments and feedback you might have would be appreciated.
Note this is just the top two layers of the NHS. The top layer (NHS England) is being merged into a new organisation and the second layer (the Integrated Care boards) is being reformed.
If you care about transparency, you should care about these endless restructuring activities. A portion of this project was conceived back when CCGs (clinical commissioning groups) were still in existence. I watched as their websites disappeared. Maybe somewhere someone has all that financial transparency data. No, it isn't at data gov uk (some is).
Some short conclusions: Threshold limited transparency is not transparency, we need it all. Transparency limited to outgoing payments is not transparency, we need incoming too.
Thanks to the many people here who have interacted with and commented on some bits and pieces of this.
https://lnkd.in/e-E5ZwfP
NHS spending transparency: what are we really seeing?
In 2010, the UK government introduced a transparency mandate requiring public bodies to publish all spending above £25,000 designed to build trust, reduce waste and enable public scrutiny. But in 2025, amid staff shortages, care rationing, and administrative upheaval, this legacy policy has grown increasingly inadequate.
A new study by Animotu Mohammed, Golnaz Shahtahmassebi, Haroldo V. Ribeiro, Jack Sutton and Quentin Hanley S. Hanley examines nearly 2 million NHS England and ICB transactions. Their findings challenge the very foundation of transparency:
• A £291 billion gap between reported income and expenditure reveals large portions of NHS funding flows that are invisible.
• Some ICBs publish full transaction data, others cut off exactly at the £25k threshold masking up to 30 times more smaller payments.
• Around 1.3 million under threshold transactions include critical services like a £140 GP learning disability health check. These payments are absent from many datasets.
• Just 1.3 percent of suppliers account for over 80 percent of NHS spending, yet internal NHS bodies are inconsistently classified across regions.
• Spending patterns follow complex scaling laws expense types act like a vocabulary, transaction volumes reflect usage suggesting systemic structure is hidden by arbitrary thresholds.
These findings come at a pivotal moment, ironically as:
• A government “financial reset” requires trusts to make up to 12 percent in efficiency savings leading to service closures, retrenchment of talking therapies and cuts of up to 1,500 clinical roles per trust
• Integrated Care Board budgets are being slashed by 50 percent, prompting widespread reorganisation and thousands of staff redundancies.
• The government has announced a ten-year NHS reform plan focused on digital transformation, abolishing NHS England, scrapping hundreds of quangos and tying funding to patient satisfaction metrics.
The irony is stark as NHS leaders face deeper cuts, forced redundancies and shrinking budgets, transparency remains fragmented. The mandate that helped open the system now obscures more than it reveals.
To truly evaluate efficiency, equity and performance in one of the world’s largest public institutions, we need full transaction level visibility, not just headline figures above outdated thresholds.
Read the full report: Nonlinear Rank Scaling and Hidden Structure in NHS Expenditure Transparency Data, Mohammed et al 2025.
https://lnkd.in/eDsxEsGj#NHS#PublicSpending#HealthPolicy#DataTransparency#OpenData#ICBs#NHSFunding#HealthcareReform#DigitalHealth#HealthEconomics#GovTech#Accountability#OpenGovernment
Our paper looking at transparancy and NHS finances has been uploaded to Arxiv. For a variety of reasons we have decided to do this a little in advance of peer reviewed journal submission.
Any comments and feedback you might have would be appreciated.
Note this is just the top two layers of the NHS. The top layer (NHS England) is being merged into a new organisation and the second layer (the Integrated Care boards) is being reformed.
If you care about transparency, you should care about these endless restructuring activities. A portion of this project was conceived back when CCGs (clinical commissioning groups) were still in existence. I watched as their websites disappeared. Maybe somewhere someone has all that financial transparency data. No, it isn't at data gov uk (some is).
Some short conclusions: Threshold limited transparency is not transparency, we need it all. Transparency limited to outgoing payments is not transparency, we need incoming too.
Thanks to the many people here who have interacted with and commented on some bits and pieces of this.
https://lnkd.in/e-E5ZwfP
Read this brilliant article by Chris Fleming, Public Digital’s Health and Care lead, which sets out five ways the government can make its 10 Year NHS digitisation plan work:
1. Be bold, ambitious and focused on the problem you are trying to solve, but accept that the solutions needed may vary..
2. Start small, test and learn, move fast.
3. Fix the basics.
4. Give equal voice to policy, operations, clinical, technology and design.
5. Think long term.
⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️
https://lnkd.in/eTq3qaDD
Well worth reading.
Although this post from Chris is focussed on the new 10-year NHS plan for England, the lessons and approach he suggests here are just as valid and important for NHS Wales and the public sector as a whole.
Read this brilliant article by Chris Fleming, Public Digital’s Health and Care lead, which sets out five ways the government can make its 10 Year NHS digitisation plan work:
1. Be bold, ambitious and focused on the problem you are trying to solve, but accept that the solutions needed may vary..
2. Start small, test and learn, move fast.
3. Fix the basics.
4. Give equal voice to policy, operations, clinical, technology and design.
5. Think long term.
⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️
https://lnkd.in/eTq3qaDD
"...the absolute first thing is to have wifi that works in all corners of the estate, computers that don’t take five minutes to boot up, and an operating system that provides half-decent cybersecurity."
Some NHS realism, as ever, from Chris Fleming.
Read this brilliant article by Chris Fleming, Public Digital’s Health and Care lead, which sets out five ways the government can make its 10 Year NHS digitisation plan work:
1. Be bold, ambitious and focused on the problem you are trying to solve, but accept that the solutions needed may vary..
2. Start small, test and learn, move fast.
3. Fix the basics.
4. Give equal voice to policy, operations, clinical, technology and design.
5. Think long term.
⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️
https://lnkd.in/eTq3qaDD
NHS England has confirmed that all Trusts must integrate their EPR systems with the NHS e-Referral Service (e-RS) FHIR API during 2025/26, and there’s central funding available to support this transition.
Our solution is already live with Phase 1 at Wirral, and Phase 2 is set to go live in the coming weeks at another NHS site. This next phase includes full integration capabilities, delivering key benefits:
✅ Auto-creates Millennium EPR encounters, enabling labs/diagnostics before referral outcome
✅ Supports pre-appointment investigations, improving outpatient efficiency
✅ Streamlines referral management with automatic OP encounter creation, reducing manual work
✅ Provides a clear audit trail of e-RS referral interactions.
✅ Saves time and paper
✅ Boosts workflow efficiency
We're ready to help you build your NHSE application and move fast.
📩 Get in touch if you'd like to explore how we can support your Trust realise these benefits: pulse-enquiries@stvconsulting.uk#DigitalHealth#HealthTech#PatientCare#eRS#NHS#HealthcareInnovation#DigitalTransformation#StVincentsConsultingJacob Ankrah | Richard Baylor
