GE Healthcare Partners with Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Bradford Teaching Hospitals (BTH) is a research and teaching NHS hospital trust. Clinical quality is above average on most metrics, and management has performed well on cost control. However, productivity in clinical operations has proven difficult to progress at pace, which is a fundamental problem when specialist staff are in short supply and public-sector finances are tight. 

During the discovery phase, GEHCP confirmed that productivity was held back by learned patterns of behaviour, inefficient management processes and unmet BI requirements. GEHCP offered an innovative 5-year programme funded from gains in productivity, with the bulk accruing to the hospital. This included direct support for productivity in care services, plus support for front line staff and support functions to enable change, in areas such as BI, work culture, management systems, and leader development. 

GEHCP and BTH signed a contract together in March 2018. Since then, the two organisations have worked to integrate the Enabler projects with existing strategy, to analyse the issues in more detail, and to push top priority projects in patient care and work culture.   

Feedback from staff is that the programme feels very different from consulting engagements they have experienced before. Ward staff struggling with vacancies say they feel more positive. Senior leaders in the surgical division recognise better leadership from key individuals and successes in scheduling additional patients on surgical lists. In the Endoscopy unit, which serves a wide range of patients including urgent cancer referrals, clinical activity has increased significantly over the last six months.