Sussex Community NHS Trust hopes Capita can drive efficiency savings

SCT is the main provider of NHS community health services across West Sussex as well as Brighton & Hove.

However, in recognition of the scale of the challenges facing the NHS, SCT claims it needs extra support to identify ‘new and exciting ways of achieving its vision of excellent care at the heart of the community’.

Capita will provide clinical expertise, service design skills, health intelligence and reporting, and innovative technologies to help the trust develop its services and processes.

SCT and Capita will work as partners to identify efficiencies and better ways of working, and accelerate the pace by which improvements are achieved.

The five-year agreement will initially focus on strengthening the skills and resources of key SCT clinical and support service leaders to enable them to better identify and drive change; supporting the SCT property and facilities management infrastructure and services, so that patients and staff benefit from an improved estate; and helping the SCT procurement team to achieve better value for money from non-salary expenditure so that savings can be reinvested into patient care.

SCT’s director of finance, facilities and estates Jonathan Reid said: “The strategic relationship will help us move forward in our work to realise our vision and deliver our strategic objectives.

“We can show we are making steady progress with regard to the quality and sustainability of our patient care services. The additional support that Capita can give will be essential in helping us accelerate this progress and underpin our work to achieve NHS foundation trust status in 2014.

“We will work together as partners to build upon on our respective strengths and expertise and achieve tangible improvements for the health and care system in Sussex. Ultimately, it’s about delivering improved services and better care to some of the most vulnerable patients in the communities we serve.”

Emma Pearson, chief executive at Capita Health and Wellbeing said: “The political and economic environment is challenging the NHS to deliver services more effectively and more efficiently, while still improving patient care.

“Against this backdrop this innovative partnership is designed to overcome these challenges by blending the trust’s considerable clinical skills and knowledge of the local community with Capita’s broad experience of providing, supporting and helping to transform healthcare services across the NHS and the private healthcare sector.

“We believe that we can help to genuinely improve outcomes for patients at the same time as helping Sussex Community NHS Trust achieve foundation trust status.”

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