Challenge: Our community services client required their Cost Improvement Programme (CIP) to be validated, further opportunities identified, and implementation planned.
Solution: We developed a template to capture all CIP opportunities. In addition to existing ideas we focused on the opportunities to make savings across the wider health economy by reducing emergency admissions and excess bed days in the local acute trust. This could be achieved by better use of community beds. We emphasised the importance of metrics in demonstrating improvement in performance and completed groundwork on dashboard reporting of project progress.
Outcome: We identified over £7 million of additional savings. The planning exercise left the client with identified project leads for each initiative and a timeline for implementation. The project set the client on course for merger with a neighbouring aspiring foundation trust and demonstrated the ongoing viability of many of the services.