NHS - Shared Business Services

NHS Shared Business Services goes live with eight new NHS Clients

NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS), a unique joint venture between the Department of Health and Steria, today announced a further eight new contract wins with NHS organisations totalling 17 new customers since April 2009.

NHS SBS now supports nearly 30% of all NHS organisations, enabling NHS Trusts to save money through operational efficiencies and improved service quality. It already provides back office services to more than 120 NHS Trusts and aims to increase this further by expanding core services to deliver real added value – improved financial control, management information, better reporting and benchmarking.

John Neilson, managing director of NHS SBS, said, “We are delighted to welcome our new client Trusts. We have seen a real surge in NHS organisations choosing to join us, thanks in part because we can clearly demonstrate the value of being with NHS SBS. It is not only about saving money – it is also about quality of service, improved business intelligence, speed, accuracy and a team of people dedicated to supporting our clients.”

John added “There has also been a substantial rise in levels of client satisfaction - a recent survey shows that 90% of our clients “would recommend NHS SBS,” which is a great result. This year we achieved ‘World Class’ ranking in the Hackett global benchmark on effectiveness and efficiency; we are hugely proud of this result and I believe it reflects the commitment of our people to make improvements and to measure the effects of these improvements to benefit our clients.

“We have worked very hard this year to make sure all our clients have great service, value for money and better management information. Our overall ambition is to deliver even more savings for NHS Trusts and we are on target to put back around £250m over 10 years, which could pay for more than 12,000 extra nurses” John continued.

Earlier this year, NHS Doncaster joined NHS SBS. Commenting on the service, Debbie Hilditch, director of organisational development and corporate affairs at NHS Doncaster, said, “We took the decision to move finance & accounting and payroll services to NHS SBS. This is a key step in NHS Doncaster's drive to modernise the organisation in becoming World Class Commissioners with excellent governance arrangements in relation to finance and accounting and payroll, and we look forward to developing strong partnership working in the future."

One of the new clients going live this month is NHS Nottinghamshire County.  Helen Pledger, associate director of finance at the Trust, said, “The PCT is just completing the migration phase of the project. This has been very well managed with excellent support from the NHS SBS team across all areas. This is particularly impressive, given the very tight timescale the PCT had to deliver the project."

"Going forward, we need to focus on delivering the best health care for our community and by outsourcing our back office finance, accounting and payroll services to NHS SBS we can concentrate on strategic goals. NHS SBS provides a wealth of management information through a range of up to the minute dashboards, which means we will have better financial controls, better systems management and a more robust IT infrastructure.”

Helen continued, “The recent Operating Efficiency Programme recommends shared services as one of the most effective ways to reduce costs and we believe that NHS SBS will support us to achieve our targets in this area."

The NHS Trusts that have gone live in this wave are:

Finance & Accounting
• NHS Brent
• NHS Leicester City
• Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust

Finance & Accounting and Payroll
• Bassetlaw PCT
• NHS Doncaster
• NHS Nottingham City
• NHS Nottinghamshire County
• Trafford Healthcare NHS Trust