1.5 million
Number of NHS staff, with 47,000 people visiting A&E each day
Our role
Combining expertise from across our health teams with the right technology
Outcomes
Sustainable change to improve access to services and reduce waiting lists
Featuring
A multi-user dashboard to enable a 360-degree view of forecasting activity
In the face of an increasingly ageing population and ever-growing demand, our healthcare system requires significant change. From lengthy waiting lists, estates in need of repair and thinly spread services, solutions to build a system fit for the future are urgently required. With public finances strained, data, technology and innovative funding models are at the heart of these solutions.
Setting the scene
On the front line of the challenges facing the UK’s health services are hospitals - seeing an average 47,000 people in A&E departments each day and being the place of work for many of the 1.5 million staff employed by the NHS. With complex buildings and teams, and many interdependencies, they need to understand future demand, impacts of clinical interventions, new models of care and how these translate to improvements in approach.
By combining the expertise of our diverse teams with the right technology to help clients and achieve sustained outcomes, PwC is able to help the NHS deliver care with confidence today, and well into the future. Our specialist healthcare teams are bringing expertise across health industries, including workforce and patient experience, data and digital programmes, financial sustainability and capital programmes, to solve these complex challenges and help drive outcomes for patients across the UK.
Our work
An analytics project, undertaken by PwC alongside University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, supports the NHS and helps inform national capital investment - with the insights to plan better and configure hospitals to meet demand and be fit for the future.
We built a model to give the Trust a 360-degree view of forecasting activity, across inpatients, outpatients, theatres and emergency care. This model will benefit NHS staff by helping to recover services that are currently struggling, increase productivity and ensure facilities are equipped to effectively manage the anticipated demand.
Our model will help the Trust to determine the theatre capacity and number of beds that will be required over the next 15 years. Our solution also allows it to see the predicted impact of strategic decisions and new clinical interventions, as well as a new layer of understanding and challenge around the true drivers of service demand and utilisation. For example, rather than just seeing a percentage growth in service, this is now split into factors that the Trust cannot have an impact on, such as population or demographic growth; and factors that they can, such as accessibility arrangements and services offered.
The outputs of the model have been pulled into a multi-user interactive dashboard. This allows insights to be shared with both operational staff - to drive changes in the most impactful areas - as well as the Trust board to inform strategic decision making, and wider stakeholders within the NHS.
“The PwC and UHL teams worked closely to ensure the model was able to cope with the needs of the Trust. The PwC team brought decades of healthcare modelling best practice and experience which was fully leveraged to upskill the Trust team.”
Nicky Topham
Reconfiguration Programme Director at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust
Our impact
From the changes we can model, patients have improved access to services and support, reducing and better managing waitlists. Lastly, the output from this model will help to forecast rigorously the capacity the trust will need, along with the budget required, to accomplish the ambition of the new hospital.
Feature
Funding for new hospitals
With strained public finances limiting capital investment in NHS estates, there is an opportunity for the UK to look to a blended model of drawing in private capital alongside available public capital.
In Wales we have been working with a range of public sector clients to deliver hospitals, schools and roads using the Welsh Government’s Mutual Investment Model (MIM), a model for delivering off balance sheet, revenue funded infrastructure investment.
Most recently, we have provided a wide range of services advising the Velindre University NHS Trust on the appointment of a finance consortium to deliver the new Velindre Cancer Centre project in Cardiff. Our team provided advice on the statistical classification of the project, assistance with the preparation of the business case and value for money assessments, accounting advice and support during commercial negotiations.
The new cancer hospital will help the Trust to meet future demand for cancer services in Wales and will enhance the patient, carer and staff experience.
The Acorn consortium, led by Sacyr Infrastructure UK Ltd, Kajima Partnerships Ltd and Abrdn, has raised senior debt via a long-term fixed rate institutional investor facility and a floating rate commercial bank facility with associated hedging. An equity investment by the Welsh Government (through the Development Bank of Wales) will enable the public sector to participate in any return on investment.
The appointment of a consortium on the new Velindre Cancer Centre project is the third project for which the Welsh Government has utilised the MIM structure and follows the A465 Sections 5&6 road project and the 21st Century Schools and Colleges Programme. PwC has advised on all MIM schemes from inception to contract award.
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