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NHS Vaccine Rollout Success – How spirit, speed and skills conquered some of the biggest challenges
We are proud to have supported the NHS with key Interim Consultants with critical supply chain skills and project leadership experience. Here we take a look at some of the big challenges.

The Case for Remote Working in the NHS – From Stop Gap Measure to New Normal
From blood tests to imaging the NHS is making these more accessible away from hospitals. Exploring how embedding diagnostic capabilities deeper into local community centres can improve the NHS’s ability to discover and treat health issues more rapidly.

The Quiet Axing of the NHS A&E Target, and What Comes Next
NHS proposals to redesign the 4-hour A&E waiting list performance target into 10 granular metrics. The pros and concerns.

Community Diagnostic Hubs – Getting Ahead in the Funding Queue.
From blood tests to imaging the NHS is making these more accessible away from hospitals. Exploring how embedding diagnostic capabilities deeper into local community centres can improve the NHS’s ability to discover and treat health issues more rapidly.

How to respond to current workforce challenges?
Andrew Vaux – Head of Independent Healthcare , Practicus 2020 is the first year that IHPN has run its industry barometer survey to take the

Serving the NHS with Interim Management
We have been working with the NHS for more than 15 years to deliver skilled and experienced Interims for leadership positions. Our experts help the

Property Rationalisation and the Right ‘Hybrid’ Work-from-Home Model
During the pandemic, some PMOs are thriving whilst others are exposing flaws and weaknesses. Here are the six things that separate them.

6 THINGS YOUR PMO SHOULD DO FOR YOU
During the pandemic, some PMOs are thriving whilst others are exposing flaws and weaknesses. Here are the six things that separate them.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE PMO
The PMO at its conception had a very simple purpose, one that remains as true today as it did back then. Over the PMO’s history, has the world lost sight of it?

INSIGHTS ON PARTNERING WITH THE NHS (INDEPENDENT HEALTH)
Andrew Vaux – Head of Independent Healthcare , Practicus It was an invitation only ‘virtual’ Roundtable for leaders within Independent Health to explore how as

WEBINAR: SUCCESSFUL LEADERS LEARN TO WORK WITH AMBIGUITY…HOW?
In the second Webinar of our ‘Accelerated Change’ series, we examine how successful leaders leverage ambiguity to their advantage. In an increasingly complex environment where

WEBINAR: YOU CANNOT MANAGE CHANGE
This is the controversial conclusion reached by author Catherine Hayes in her recently released book, Transition Leadership, Navigating the Complexities of Change. For many in

ASK THE COMMUNITY TESTIMONIAL: PHARMA + BIOTECH
Find out more about Ask The Community Find out more about the Practicus community more broadly

Interim Management in a time of COVID-19
For many commentators COVID-19 has not changed the future, it has simply brought it forward. Surpassing trend predictions are remote working, online collaboration and process

ASK THE COMMUNITY TESTIMONIAL: SAP HANA
Find out more about Ask The Community Find out more about the Practicus community more broadly

ASK THE COMMUNITY TESTIMONIAL: DATA
Find out more about Ask The Community Find out more about the Practicus community more broadly

Systemic thinking: Transitioning from COVID-19 to truly integrated care
With collaboration between Healthcare systems in response to COVID-19 at an all-time high, we hosted a Webinar today to look at how the impetus for integrated change can be sustained and enhanced as we imagine the future of healthcare in the UK.

ASK THE COMMUNITY TESTIMONIAL: NHS
When Transformation Leader, Liz Eckert was grappling with the challenge on how to measure need, ahead of making recommendations on where to position urgent treatment

Solving problems with technology in health + social care
Practicus recently held a Round Table event to explore what problems technology could solve in health and social care this decade? Although the Coronavirus was

Navigating Change: Engaging your People through a Crisis
With COVID-19 having a significant impact on businesses throughout the world, we spoke with Practicus community member, Nik Butcher, an expert in Engaging and Rewarding people and the founder of Chuangyi and SEE Reward.

Conflicting Standards
As an operational leader in the NHS, I would want to change the number of opposing constitutional standards.

Good Governance
It would be to make governance more consistent. To my mind, governance should be like a game of premier league football…

Remove the Political Reigns
I’d love for the NHS to be removed from political change. I know this is a Nirvana-like state but we can all dream.

Embed Collaboration
It would be to ensure collaboration and cooperation are embedded into every aspect of the NHS. I have seen first-hand, the power that collaboration has in delivering sustainable high quality services.

Simplify Before Adding
It would be that out-of-hospital services, provided by a combination of acute hospitals, community health & social care organisations and the voluntary sector, are frequently disconnected.

Art of the Possible
Whenever I support an organisation with the development of their savings programme…

The best HR system for 1,000 employees?
Recently, one of our clients came to us with a question. They wanted to know what would be the best HR system for their organisation.

Aligning Incentives
I would change the financial incentives so that all organisations are rewarded for the achievement of patient-determined outcomes….

Dynamic Usage
The amount of NHS footprint that goes unused on a routine basis borders on the criminal and needs to change…

Demand Management
We’ve been talking about integrating health and social care for many years now – and yet evidence of meaningful progress is rarely seen.

Delivering the real efficiencies of digital innovation
The benefits of digital as a channel to customers are well established. What often proves more elusive for large organisations are the substantial cost savings

Money is not the answer
The obvious ‘one thing’ that most would choose would be more money! But I am convinced that would not be the solution and would actually compound the already lopsided current system.

Curing Prevention
I’d restore ‘Prevention of ill-health’ as a key priority for the NHS. One of the less controversial aspects of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 reforms at the time, was the transfer of public health commissioning from the NHS to local authorities.

IR35 – What it means for Clients
The Off-Payroll Rules/IR35 is not new tax legislation. Rules have been in place since 2000. However, changes to these rules were implemented in the Public

IR35 – What it means for Interims
The Off-Payroll Rules/IR35 is not new tax legislation. Rules have been in place since 2000. However, changes to these rules were implemented in the Public

How does Clinical Leadership and Engagement support the Delivery of Sustainable Change?
On Thursday 19th September, Practicus ran a roundtable discussion for clinicians, including CEOs, COOs and Senior Directors and Chief Nurses to focus on the challenges of delivering sustainable change from a clinical perspective. The event was well attended and chaired by Andrea O’Connell, Executive Director of Nursing.

Delivering Integrated Care: The ‘What’ and the ‘How’ In Partnership with Sir David Dalton
On Thursday 12th September, Practicus ran a roundtable for CEOs, COOs and Senior Directors in the North West focused on the challenges of delivering sustainable integrated care. The event was well attended and led by Sir David Dalton, who gave a short presentation of his own experience ahead of chairing the discussion.

Psychological Intervention
We invest billions every year in pills, potions, treatments and surgery and yet we invest little in psychological support. And I don’t mean counselling – I mean psychological support delivered by highly – skilled clinicians.

Practicus’s support for BALM
When the leading Business Architect for Lloyd’s of London, Neil Williams engaged Practicus, his ambition was to resurrect an initiative that had previously struggled to

The changing world of pharmaceuticals
The world of Pharma is undergoing significant change. “Big volume is now generic. To add value, you need to actually have a different proposition rather

Women in Life Sciences: Pathways to Success
The purpose of this event was to discuss the current issues surrounding women in Life Sciences and the various ways women can succeed in senior positions.

Insights from a Business Architect in the London Market
Now that the CEO of Lloyd’s of London, John Neal, has released his strategy aimed at shaping the future of the world’s (re)insurance market, we

Roundtable Discussion: Sustainable Change within the NHS
The purpose of this roundtable discussion was to ask senior NHS leaders, including COOs, CFOs, CEO’s and Turnaround Directors their thoughts and innovative suggestions on how we can deliver and maintain sustainable change within the healthcare sector.

Community Testimonial: Mark Chapman
Mark Chapman, CEO at Alliance Medical Group talks to us about the benefits of being part of the Practicus Community and how it can be

The changing world of pharmaceuticals
The world of Pharma is undergoing significant change. “Big volume is now generic. To add value, you need to actually have a different proposition rather

The Primacy of Primary
For three decades our health and care policies vacillated between three competing needs, with the third priority having an increasingly dominant run.

Unnecessary Variation
About the NHS it would be its lack of consistency. I spend time in a lot of different organisations and there are significant variations in practice that can mean less than optimal clinical care for patients, as well as additional unnecessary expens

Long Term Planning
Apart from the obvious wish for enhanced funding to arrive, the greatest limitation I have found with the NHS is the inability to plan service delivery (and thereby cost savings) over a long period.

Sustainable Leadership
It would be the approach to recruitment, retention and development of leaders and leadership teams at all levels of the NHS.

QI Training
After training over a thousand leads and clinical staff in the use of Quality Improvement (QI) tools, I am passionate about skills and capability building for NHS staff. If we always do what we have done, we will get the same results.

Practicus rises to 2nd place in the annual provider survey (IIM)
t has been a good first half to the year for Practicus. We turned 15 years old, we launched new value-added services based on our ONE + MANY model and we came 2nd in the Institute of Interim Management’s provider survey 2019, our highest ever position!

Mental Health Awareness: Creating Kinder Cultures within the Workplace
Research shows that mental health problems in the workplace cost UK employers £26 billion per year, averaging £1,035 per employee. In fact, the vast majority of people will be impacted by mental health problems at some point in their life.

Restructuring Funding
Having spent over 12 years in the NHS in a variety of consulting roles – mainly focused on transformation and turnaround challenges – I have seen huge change. Some of this has been progressive but unfortunately, a lot has been unsuccessful, failing to deliver both sustainable benefits for patients and staff, or efficiency gains and financial improvement.

Stuck at the Border
It would be around the “connectivity of care” and effective seamless “handovers” – or dare I say it, have no “handovers” at all!
t is widely known that with every “hand off” at least 1-2 days delay are inbuilt into the patients journey – which can lead to more mistakes, confusion around who has done what already, deterioration of the patient, re-reviewing patients and Community out of-hospital staff having difficulty locating and receiving patients.

High-End Assurance
The NHS is steeped in history and tradition, and has a strong surrounding infrastructure to support regulatory compliance, but sometimes this can lead to compartmentalisation of roles. I would change the way we think about clinical governance and how it sometimes gets separated out from operational and financial activity.

Personal Responsibility
The value and place of the NHS is not in question, nor is its contribution to the quality of all our lives. But something needs to change if policies on personal responsibility are to embed more widely

Breaking down Barriers
f I could change one thing (politics aside) it would be to take a sledge hammer and open the whole lot up, take away the barriers, share information openly and work as a truly single organisation, only then will we be able to get to the root cause of our problems and solve them together.

Round-table Discussion: Agency and Temporary Staff – Business Friends or Unaffordable Overhead?
For the longest time, healthcare providers in both the public and independent sector have depended on agency staff, particularly around nursing, in order to meet their organisational objective.

HR High Tea: Reward Strategy – Achieving more with Less
On Tuesday 9th April, we ran our ‘HR High Tea: Reward Strategy – Achieving more with Less’ event at Albert’s- Beaufort House in Chelsea to discuss ways companies can do more for less in the HR reward space. The session was led by Nik Butcher from Chuangyi Group.

Integrated Talent Management
It would be for evolving health and care systems to have available the workforce they really require. Fundamentally, we are in a place where the services that are there to support the health and care needs of individuals, do not have the key individuals they need to do so. For several years now, it has been well-recognised that professionals in key disciplines are in desperately short supply.

Managing at Scale
It would be with management structures. The great companies have one thing in common: a world-class management system. One that cascades from top to bottom of the organisation, allowing management of their business at all levels and a clear line of sight from board to shop floor.

Standardisation of Funding
’d use the average income per specialty information to achieve standardisation of funding to providers across the NHS. National data exists or can be generated that would provide a basis for comparison to a peer group of similar providers at a specialty level.

NHS ‘What If…” Report
As NHS leaders announced their long-term plans in 2019, we invited the views of a group of people seldom heard from, to see

15 YEARS OF PROBLEM SOLVING + RECRUITMENT
Have you ever been in one of those situations where you really don’t fit in but have the good fortune to meet someone who thinks

Independent Healthcare and the NHS: Partnerships
by Carl Stevenson At the end of 2018, Practicus coordinated a roundtable – hosted by Alliance Healthcare – that brought together leaders from independent healthcare

Good people, made better
by Darren Tolhurst, CEO. It’s taken us 15 years but we think we’ve finally cracked it! We set out in 2004 to change the way

BI Without The BS
by Lawrence Hill. A night of open, honest discussion around the art of the possible. There’s a lot of excitement about Business Intelligence (BI) tools

Winning the war of attrition in independent health
by Carl Stevenson, Managing Consultant. I wrote recently that the workforce problem facing independent health due to Brexit was really an intensification of long-standing hiring

The elephant in the room isn’t Brexit
by Carl Stevenson, Managing Consultant. There may be six months to go before the UK leaves the European Union but the EU worker tap has

Overcoming resistance to change
In this series, we interview a respected change leader to discuss the successes and hard lessons that made them who they are today. This month,

Practicus Executive Search Survey Report
By Lawrence Hill. Traditionally, executive search has always been about… well, searching for the right executive. But a recent survey conducted across 16 UK sectors

How to build a giant-killer
In this series, we interview a respected change leader to discuss the successes and hard lessons that made them who they are today. This month,

Who Should Lead Data Strategy?
by Ben Culora. As boardrooms across the world grapple with shaping a data-driven future for their business, there is real danger in believing the need

Lessons from leaders of change: Keith Monk
In this series, we interview a respected change leader to discuss the successes and hard lessons that made them who they are today. This month,

Outpatients Improvement
As pressure on Outpatients performance increases, we speak to Steve Gasking, an interim transformation director with more than a decade’s experience in acute environments. With

Driving Forward Data Science in Insurance
It’s interesting the ideas that come up in conversation when you are networking with people who share your interests. Take the example of two Scottish

Higher Education: Delivering Effective Change
Idris Kamara interviews Aya Ferguson about effective ways to improve the success of Higher Education change initiatives. It’s no secret that there is a bit

Why interim management is much less costly than you think
by Natalie Allen. As someone who places senior interim executives into companies, I often find that many still have a mythological fear about choosing interims
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PRaCTICuS podcast
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Practicus digital transformation podcast
with dave kemble and james rowson
Episodes
We interview Jim Stevenson, CEO of the Bletchley Group and someone who played a role in digitally transforming organisations such as The Guardian, Marks & Spencers, BUPA, Selfridges and Scout24.ch. What does digital mean to him? And most importantly what lessons has he learned?
Episode 2:
We talk to Enrique Fernandez-Pino, a CDO and an expert in developing digital strategies who has assisted some of the biggest brands in UK highstreet retail, supermarkets and the passenger transport industry across a long career. For Enrique, Digital means Human – we discuss the role of AI, the role of digital capabilities in brand perception and why the £4bn business he was CIO of was already prepared when the pandemic hit.
Episode 3:
We’re joined by Tim Copper, an experienced business digital transformation leader who focusses on bringing the commercial and tech worlds together to create step changes in revenue growth. Working across multiple sectors and PE-backed businesses, he has successfully delivered customer-focused transformations at Travelopia, Camelot, British Gas, O2, AOL and Telstra.
Episode 4:
We are joined by Ben Tilly, a hands-on digital transformation leader with over 20 years commercial experience. Having started out in web design, he soon moved into the world of marketing working for Apple and the BBC before finding his passion in the life sciences sector over 10 years ago. Having led numerous digital and multi-channel campaigns successfully, we talk to him about the challenges of digital marketing in the pharma and life sciences industries.
Episode 5:
Sharon Prior talks to us about transforming one of the oldest businesses in the world, the Post Office. How do you tackle a 350-year-old start-up? Sharon is a seasoned CIO with global experience in business transformation and operations. She’s worked across multiple industries, including financial services, banking, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, retail, oil, and gas and logistics.
Episode 6:
This episode we explore what it takes to build winning teams and deliver digital transformations successfully. Joining us is Kate Holden, a highly accomplished senior leader with executive board experience and a significant track record of driving profitable growth through digital acceleration, strategic partnerships and large-scale programme delivery. This has resulted in award winning digital products with some of the most respected global brands including RELX, PLC, Pearson PLC, and the Financial Times.
One Event
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UPCOMING Events
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