Baxter, which has its headquarters in Compton, has sites across the North West including Cheadle, Swinton and Stockport. The company has worked with the renal team at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, to improve care for patients with kidney conditions. The company identified a need to train patients who were suitable for dialysis at home. They established a residential education centre, building on the success of their centre established in Kew, London, which could train not only local patients, but also people from the wider North West region. The centre provides education for renal patients and parenteral nutrition.

The Baxter Education Centre North in Swinton opened its doors in June 2018 and so far 32 patients have been trained, and referrals are rapidly increasing.

The centre can accommodate 275 patients for training per year, potentially saving the NHS more than 15,000 hours of staff time per year.

Macclesfield business Healthcare Communications has developed digital appointment letters which are now being used by 13 NHS trusts and already half of patients are choosing to receive their appointment letters digitally.

The Patient Portal delivers appointment messages via a single text containing a secure link to the digital letter. Patients can access all information digitally and confirm, cancel or rebook with one click. Letter content can also be converted into 99 different languages. Combined with reminders sent through other channels such as SMS, Interactive Voice Messaging or Agents Calls, the proportion of missed appointments in one trust has reduced from 12 per cent to 6.5 per cent, which is estimated to have saved more than £1 million.

LIME Music for Health delivers a programme of ward-based professional musicians’ residencies through Medical Notes: Music at the Heart of Life at The Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital. Specially trained musicians work in wards and at the bedside with children, young people and families.

The organisation’s work has shown a beneficial effect on the cardiovascular, respiratory and neurological systems on children, lowering heart rates, increasing oxygen saturation levels and reducing stress and anxiety. Research conducted with Salford University found that music making supported children’s resilience in dealing with hospitalisation and transformed the hospital experience for children and families.

The Countess of Chester Hospital launched an initiative which led to improved staffing levels and reduced waiting times for patients. It involves a new national framework agreement that facilitates maximisation of in-house capacity so that NHS organisations using it can reduce or eliminate the need for additional mobile facilities and expensive outsourcing. Commonly known as “insourcing” the framework allows a legally compliant route for the NHS to access expertise without the need to create separate tender processes.

One NHS Trust using this framework was able to increase theatre capacity so that the trust could perform operations on an extra 100 patients per month and engage more than 250 nurses, physiotherapists, surgeons, anaesthetists, healthcare assistants and administrative staff in out-of-hours activity. This led to a 30 per cent reduction in the number of patients waiting for appointments; a 10 per cent improvement in referral times to treatment; and a 95 per cent increase in patient satisfaction.

Helen Oulton is the Lead Nurse for Infection Control at The Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust, Liverpool. Helen is involved with any changes to products which may have an impact on preventing and managing infections, acting as a link between the Procurement department and the Infection Control team.

As a result of the work, The Walton Centre has been commended by NHS England for surpassing the national target of ten per cent reductions in e-coli infections. By working with Procurement to trial and implement a wide range of products including patient wipes, clean trace swabs and staff disposable gowns, Helen’s work has also helped to limit the incidence of clostridium difficile and Carbapenemase Producing Enterobacteriaceae (CPE).

Richard Robinson is a Senior Buyer who works in the non-medical section of the procurement team at York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

He has participated in the Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association (HCSA) ‘Summer School’ and is currently studying with the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS).

Richard managed the procurement of a Resident Medical Officer for Bridlington Hospital which led to an established service on the East Coast, and estimated savings of £720,000 over three years, based on the Trust’s previous spend on agency staff.

Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust commissioned Lexmark to provide a fully managed print service and suite of printers and photocopiers in order to streamline operational efficiencies, control costs, promote sustainability and support their digital transformation roadmap. The result is a projected cost saving of more than 30 per cent over the life of the contract.

A strong relationship between the trust and the supplier was central to the success of the project.

PS5 has developed a security safety tool, ResQHook, along with training for NHS staff. The use of ResQHook is accepted as the most efficient way of cutting a ligature. Suicide by self-strangulation is a major cause of premature death, particularly in people with mental illness, in prisons and in psychiatric hospitals. The ResQHook was conceived as a tool that has one purpose – to save lives in all emergency situations where rescuers need to release a victim or a patient from an entanglement, restraint or ligature.

PS5 is now delivering a training programme for NHS staff to learn to use the ResQHook in a safe and efficient manner.

RMS supplies radiology scanning services for NHS trusts across the North West. In one trust, they provided out-of-hours staffing in a radiology department which eliminated the need for a costly mobile scanning unit, saving around £250,000 per year in mobile unit fees. The trust reduced inpatient and outpatient waiting times and improved cancer referral times, while increasing the number of scans performed each day.

RMS estimates that an overall saving of around £1.6 million has been made since 2016 across the North West trusts.

Print management specialists SF Taylor were commissioned to redesign maternity information and record keeping packs used across Leeds for all pregnant women. Feedback from patients shows that the packs are easier to use and simpler to find the information they need at the different points of their pregnancy, creating an improved patient experience.

SF Taylor’s redesign of the product generated a 23 per cent cash-releasing cost saving, while logistic costs were reduced by coordinating monthly deliveries across the city in line with other product distribution. Also, the product was converted from polypropylene to paper, making it completely recyclable.

Urgo Medical worked in partnership with Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust to improve patient outcomes and leg ulcer treatment. They worked with the tissue viability team to develop a treatment pathway capturing holistic patient information, including Quality of Life, a leg ulcer assessment and wound characteristics. The result is that the community nursing team can now use the algorithm to choose the most appropriate treatment.

The introduction of the pathway has improved healing rates, reduced the cost of treatment and eliminated waiting times.

Zilico launched ZedScan, its flagship product, in late 2014 and is now driving wider adoption across the UK and elsewhere. The product is being used routinely in seven hospitals in the UK: Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (STHFT), Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust and Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.

The ZedScan device is used as an adjunct to traditional colposcopy and enables the identification of normal, cancerous and pre-cancerous cells via the use of Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS). ZedScan can help identify disease that could be missed during visual colposcopy and better help identify patients who require immediate treatment. A pivotal 1570 patient study of ZedScan in routine clinical use at STHFT demonstrated an additional 59 cases of High-Grade Cervical Intraepithelial Neoplasia (HG-CIN) were detected (13.25 per cent), an increase in treatment at first visit and a 40% reduction in follow up appointments, enabling significant cost savings for the Trust.