In the first few months of COVID, members of the Independent Healthcare Providers Network (IHPN) were trying to understand and quantify the COVID related impact on their throughput, and therefore, their finances. This was a particular challenge due to the rapidly changing and sometimes contradictory COVID related safety protocols.
In June 2020, IHPN engaged TN in a novel programme to estimate the operational and financial impact of these protocols on the delivery of planned activity within the Independent Sector.
To develop insights, we established steering and working groups comprising subject matter experts from both the Independent Sector and the NHS. Through these groups, we:
In order to mitigate the identified throughput reduction and deliver value to patients and the taxpayer, we worked with IHPN to develop a roadmap to recovery, which comprised three levers:
We built on this programme of work to co-author an article with IHPN in September 2020, which estimated the backlog of patients that had built up due to the reduction in throughput. This included an estimate of the ‘hidden’ demand i.e., from the drop in referrals due to lack of access to GPs. This article goes on to establish, at a high level, a way forward through extending the collaboration between public and private sectors.
