Health commissioning

we help commissioners in the health sector to achieve more social value within a complex procurement environment

The Need: Increasingly organisations in the health sector are being asked to get more social value through their commissioning activities. There are many approaches that can be used to both achieve and measure additional social, economic and environmental impacts from the commissioning process. To achieve more social value, it is important to have strong leadership and direction so that policy can be turned into strategy. This strong leadership needs to be coupled with a firm understanding of the key issues around social value in commissioning.

Our Response:  In an evolving and often complex procurement environment, we support PCTs to ask for and get more social value. Some of the ways that we do this include:

1. Mapping out the territory: Asking commissioners to address and understand such a complex agenda without clear direction is unreasonable. We use our knowledge and understanding of responsible procurement to map out the agenda so that commissioners are aware of all the opportunities to add value.
2. Define the approach: Once all the opportunities for adding social value are understood, it is much easier for commissioners to define an approach that fits with the strategic objectives of their PCT. We support PCTs to develop a focused and streamlined approach .
3. Decision making tools: We understand and have experience of techniques by which commissioning decisions can be made based on the social value that they offer. For example balanced scorecards can be used to understand from the outset the weight to be given to the key themes identified – they can help measure and evaluate the impacts of different approaches and provide a consistency of theming.
4. Measurement techniques: We understand and have experience of a range of tools by which social value can be measured for example social return on investment mechanisms and LM3. We can help you to understand how these mechanisms work and how they can be put to good use to measure your commissioning. 
5. Feedback on actual social value achieved: We carry out regular reports which detail the actual social value that you have achieved. This is useful as it stimulates continuous improvement in the commissioning process.

The Benefits: The main benefit of our approach is that we offer services at every step in the commissioning process. We help you to understand all the opportunities to add social value, help you to develop a strategy, help you to implement and monitor the success of the strategy and ultimately feedback to you on the actual social value achieved stimulating continuous improvement.





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