HHE Perspectives on Hospital and Industry Partnerships | Page 8

Perspectives on hospital and industry partnerships:
The aim of improving outcomes, increasing patient satisfaction and reducing costs
however, a UK Head of Contracting Management warns that there
needs to be ‘a clear and transparent business case and the partnership
needs to truly take costs out of the system, not just move them around’.
Previously, partnerships tended to adopt the traditional model
of selling based on a single product, but now there is an
understanding that solutions to support hospital objectives need
to be broader than those concerning individual products. Under
this new model, manufacturers provide not only the device or
service, but also the full-service experience before and after.
‘Transparency is a bit of a buzzword. We
need to truly take costs out of the system
rather than move them around.’
In Italy and Spain, previous partnerships have been relatively
simple to arrange. The Spanish partnerships were a mix of buying
devices and services, while in Italy they generally consisted of
data exchange where the aim was to publish specific protocols or
discover new managing methodologies.
Head of Contracting Management, UK
According to a UK Service Re-Design Manager, the public sector
must be prepared to engage with the private sector and to embrace
a new mindset, instead of sticking to the ‘we’ve always done it this
way’ mentality. There also needs to be openness regarding the
type of industry partnership – a UK Commissioning Manager
gave the example of partnerships between ophthalmology
departments and retail opticians.
Accessing different skills is a potential advantage to developing
partnerships with industry. There is a growing acceptance that
all the skills needed to develop outcome-based solutions are not
necessarily available ‘in-house’, and that they may need to be
brought in via hospital–industry partnerships.
Cost reduction is also the hope and expectation of many of the
respondents when it comes to forming partnerships with industry;
Previous experience of value-based offerings
A
In Spain, according to one Pharmacy Director, the evaluation
process for outcome-focused, value-based offerings would be
expected to take five years. However, in the UK, while it was
acknowledged that initiatives can bring about ‘significant health
improvement’ within local healthcare systems, respondents felt
that there was a difference between the results obtained in pilot
initiatives and those rolled out over a wider area.
lthough the majority of respondents had limited experience
with value-based offerings, the experience they did have
generally led them to believe that such offerings need to be carefully
scoped, with well thought-through benefits and outputs.
A French Purchasing Director indicated that, for some new
strategies, it can take between one and two years to reflect on the
parameters needed before a new tender can be launched.
‘Some initiatives, while showing significant
health improvement locally, suffer when they
are scaled up above a few practices.’
‘It means we cannot launch new types of
tender if we have not been thinking about it
with the supplier.’
Pharmacy Director, UK
Purchasing Director, France
The scaling-up process was thought to be too expensive to sustain
and maintain by the hospital or manufacturer. This should not
take away from the fact that the UK respondents acknowledged
that there have been very good value-based solutions, particularly
in diabetes.
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HHE 2018 | hospitalhealthcare.com