Reading former Labour health adviser Paul Corrigan’s paper ’Saving for the NHS’ has made me start to re-think how financial service companies, particularly mutuals, could have a greater role in future.
I met Paul Corrigan many years ago when he was assisting the government with its plans for the creation of NHS Foundation Trusts. Some say he was the author of the Foundation Trust concept. I was running a health insurance company that was mutually constituted, essentially owned by its members and stakeholders. Corrigan was interested to hear about the governance aspects of my company. He was thinking about similar structures for Foundation Trusts that could see the hospital governed by members of its local community who would have a say in how it is organised and managed.
’Saving for the NHS’ is a fascinating document. Its premise is absolute and well trodden, that the NHS will run out of cash – and soon. In the past the NHS has been used to increases in resources that have outpaced the increased demand for healthcare. This will not continue.
The hypothesis is predicated on the basis that to throw more money at the issue is not the way forward but what is desperately needed is a totally different business model to run the NHS. Corrigan’s view is that the new business model will rely on the third sector. To me this is the crucial piece in the text and one that makes it particularly interesting.
Three-quarters of the total costs of the NHS are spent on long-term healthcare conditions. 17.5 million people have long-term conditions and this figure will only increase as the population continues to age.
The argument is that in essence, people with long-tem conditions have the most to gain from external interventions. The Third Sector has existing relationships with millions of people, and many third sector organisations have a deep understanding of the problems that people and communities face and many are helping the people with long-term conditions. Some of us may be aware of the Expert Patients Programme (EPP) that has been running within the NHS for many years and is about self-management by patients of their long-term conditions.
EPP provides a range of products and services that aim to engage patients and clinicians in self management. Recent evidence has shown that significant cost savings are made and lives are significantly improved when patients take control of their own health and well-being.
I would argue that private medical insurers and health cash plan providers have been at the forefront of promoting self provision products and services for the individual when it comes to the cost of medical expenses, but there is a finite pool of consumers willing to buy into this type of offer once their perceived requirements for quicker access and cleaner hospitals are removed, or the costs of dental treatment and spectacles are sated.
I believe financial mutuals should have a role to play in supporting the new business model for healthcare. After all, many mutual organisations were formed to provide help and assistance for communities, and their members, and have a health and protection history in their very core. They often built hospitals, ran ambulance services and mobile health vans and provided the members’ healthcare needs when required long before the State took over the big responsibilities.
Three-quarters of the total costs of the NHS are spent on long-term healthcare conditions. 17.5 million people have long-term conditions and this figure will only increase as the population continues to age
Many providers have large wellbeing elements in their offering and are already working with third parties in the field of healthcare at home, EAP, vocational rehabilitation, digital technologies and other individual and employee benefit programmes. Different product propositions or even derivatives of existing products reshaped to the health agenda, strategic partnering and fresh ways of working could provide growth and sustainability. New routes to market, distribution possibilities to advisers and intermediaries and service providers could provide the sought-after customer acquisition not seen for many decades, particularly with digital and mobile healthcare growing rapidly.
Creative leadership is required: manufacturing and marketing different products, adapting routes to market and distribution possibilities, often through community, digital and social media. Some companies are having the debate, others are active in featuring it in their future strategies. It is right to act now.