Productivity: the Big Challenge

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CHN Productivity Event

We kicked off 2025 in fine style meeting in BCG’s offices where, despite a very large room, we still had people sitting around the edges! This was our lowest drop out rate ever – hopefully a sign of a great year to come!

Despite losing his voice, Julian Kelly gave an inspiring summary of the many productivity opportunities available to the NHS – from better process/operational management to widespread adoption of tech. He was positive about the scale and the feasibility of improvements.

Matthew shared his experience based on many years working across community and mental health services. He spoke about the need to take people with you, to effectively lead and support colleagues and to be clear about the why and the how of front line change. View slides here.

Q&A focused on the need to remove well-rehearsed barriers to change, namely:

  1. Regulation and approaches to risk need to recognise the significant potential of technology to improve access,quality of care and productivity
  2. Leaders need to be clearer about the potential for change and willing and able to lead and drive change
  3. Workplace cultures need to be more open to new approaches and there needs to be support for the workforce to change ways of working. Professional resistance can be a major barrier
  4. Pace of change is exceptionally slow and stodgy
  5. Procurement processes can be cumbersome – shouldn’t there be more centralised decision making which would also enable more consistency and interoperability
  6. Patient power should be captured – have users “pull” new approaches and new technology – and support more user engagement and co-production e.g. through enabling/allowing patients and users to fill in more of their own data, book their own appointments etc
  7. Resources need to be allocated to the most impactful interventions – prevention, shift left, use/invest in technology
  8. Partnerships could provide much needed capital to support new ways of working – investing to save.

Thank you to our Principal Sponsor NHS Shared Business Services for co-creating this event and to BCG for hosting at their offices.