Oli Hudson, content director at Wilmington Healthcare, looks at why new angles on the value proposition are necessary.
In today’s NHS, procurement and purchasing decisions for medtech are made in a more nuanced and multi-layered way.
The re-emergence of value-based procurement in NHS Supply Chain thinking, the pivot to system-led planning and population-based budgeting and pathways, workforce pressures, and the needs to engage with the backlog, patient safety, improved outcomes and sustainability have all made considerations other than unit cost come to the fore.
Industry needs to understand this shift and build it into their thinking when engaging with the NHS. A new customer-centric value proposition is needed: with a strong, evidence-based argument that covers these wider considerations.
Here is what it should include and how medtech should approach it.
The ‘multi-dimensional’ value proposition
Value still describes aspects of the product like the clinical efficacy, safety and patient benefits, the costed benefits it can bring, and how it can help the purchaser with organisational challenges.
What’s new is the need for the commercial pitch to speak to the requirements of the wider system, showing how it can support population health goals, deliver new and more sustainable ways of providing care, and help customers to manage strategic challenges.
At Wilmington Healthcare we have been influenced in our consideration of new aspects of the value proposition by Rob Berry, head of innovation and research at Kent Surrey Sussex AHSN, who has written about value at different levels of the health sector.
In his view the new value proposition breaks down into five fundamental areas: clinical value, value to the patient, service cost value, organisational value, and system value.
All these things should be borne in mind. But what could it mean in practical terms for medtech?
Costed pathway analysis
The most pressing needs of NHS customers now are to manage down cost and capacity pressures - it’s no longer enough for suppliers to point to the clinical value of the product in isolation.
What’s required is a deep and granular understanding of the patient journey through a pathway, how much each element of their care costs and the benefits it brings, and where and how their proposition can deliver best value.
One way of doing this is by developing a Costed Integrated Patient Scenario to help evaluate the different components in a patient’s care and show what can be changed to optimise the pathway.
Demonstrating value in population health
Another consideration is around population health, with all organisations in the NHS expected to improve health and care experience and outcomes across their populations.
Organisations will need to demonstrate that resources are fully optimised to meet the long-term needs of patients.
To assist this, medtech could show the preventative value of propositions that can prevent a patient’s condition from escalating to the point where they will need more costly treatment and care; or the social value of propositions that can reduce a patient’s dependencies by relieving their symptoms – allowing them to do more things than before.
The service value of propositions that successfully reduce demand on certain health services, and/or allow patients to be treated in a more appropriate (community) setting, is paramount.
It is important to remember the experiential value of propositions that improve the quality of a patient’s experience by reducing inconvenience or providing a less invasive way of treating them, and the efficiency value of reducing the frequency with which a patient may require follow-up care.
With capacity pressures challenging all parts of the NHS, an effective value proposition could include resourcing benefits of freeing up clinical time or remodelling the staffing mix required to administer a treatment.
Addressing strategic priorities
Propositions should also support the strategic priorities for the NHS, as described in the latest NHS operational planning guidance.
Managing the backlog will be a priority for all systems, meaning that customers will be receptive to any solutions that can build in additional capacity to reduce case lists, particularly where the proposition may help them manage down pressures on clinical teams.
Another noteworthy area is the increasing focus on access and health inequalities. For example, the NHS planning guidance is explicit about the potential consequences of delays or interruptions in cancer care due to the pandemic, highlighting the patients not currently receiving treatment who would otherwise have likely presented over this timeframe.
Medtech can use population and prevalence data to help the NHS find ‘missing patients’ and prioritise those in the greatest need.
Conclusion
Intrinsic product value is still important – but these other attributes will increasingly affect the commercial appeal. The stakeholder landscape is changing, and NHS customers need more sophisticated and rounded analysis of value.
Medtech will need to bear in mind all these requirements and come up with evidence to show the impact a product or technical intervention can make through a whole pathway.
Wilmington Healthcare provides market leading data, insight and intelligence across the healthcare community. Read our latest white paper here, or find out more about how we can support your NHS partnerships by visiting wilmingtonhealthcare.com.
