St Andrew’s Healthcare

They contacted Niche to assist them develop a demand and capacity model of their services over the next 5 years to assess their future strategic direction and associated service offer. They had a very clear strategic ambition to develop more community focused services delivering innovative offers across all care groups. This was partly a response to the emerging Provider Collaborative developments in the NHS and the desire to treat patients closer to home.

What we found

We undertook a significant process of engagement across senior clinical and operational leaders, and their commercial team. This was enabled by a number of workshops that established the baseline position for them, options for change and a revised set of strategic targets across services. We developed a very complex capacity and demand model based on a baseline over the next 5 years and possible scenarios of change. This was supplemented by estates and financial projections including detailed cash flow forecasts. As the work was developed in a highly changing market the options appraisal aspect of the work looked at possible cases for how the market would be developing over the next 5 years and how St. Andrew’s should respond in each case.

The work led to the agreement of a commercial strategy with an intertwined set of recommendations for the continued development of St. Andrew’s. We also agreed a set of ‘supporting strategic imperatives’ and ‘underpinning operational imperatives’ for them to take forward.

All of the recommendations were fully accepted.