Case Study: Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust

The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust (PAHT), Harlow is part of the UK Government’s Health Infrastructure Plan (HIP), made up of around 40 major new hospital projects across England.

The Challenge

A new hospital for PAHT is not only the development of a new site and new buildings, it is a step-change in the use of integrated digital services and innovative new technologies that will take the Trust into the future of healthcare. As part of the first wave of HIP investment, PAHT’s ambition is to create one of the most technological and digitally enabled hospitals in the UK, delivering world class care in a patient-centric and data-driven learning health system. In addition, the Digital investment had to align with NHSx’s “Blueprint for Digitally Advanced Hospitals”.

In order to gain approval for the necessary investment to build the new hospital and invest in new digital and technological services, PAHT appointed Gemserv to develop key materials for their Outline Business Case (OBC), including the Commercial Case.

Our Approach

Gemserv provided a small team of experienced consultants who presented a range of commercial and related technical inputs. We created a holistic Commercial Case, which included a detailed assessment and analysis of the possible delivery options for the broad range of the integrated digital services required; a comprehensive analysis of all of the potential procurement routes available to the Trust; consideration of the Trust’s capabilities, capacity and appetite to risk. Key deliverables and activities that we provided included:

• Assessment and analysis of a range of global Digital Hospital delivery exemplars to support the development of the delivery options and the procurement approach;
• Engagement with NHSx to understand and incorporate central procurement policy and ensure that NHSx’s published “HIP Blueprint for Digitally Advanced Hospitals” was at the centre of the digital procurement strategy;
• Broader stakeholder engagement to understand the Trust’s risk profile and appetite in order to support the development of the overall delivery and procurement approaches;
• Shaping and documenting the delivery options and providing a detailed and comprehensive assessment, analysis and associated commentary for each option using a range a key criteria;
• Consideration and analysis of the full range of procurement options, including frameworks and pre-existing NHS arrangements, including considerations in respect of any changes to the Public Contracts Regulations in respect of Brexit;
• Working with the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) to understand how the pre-existing central framework arrangements could be utilised to deliver the procurement projects and to further understand CCS’s appetite (if any) for any HIP-specific framework arrangements;
• Engagement with the Trust’s external legal team to ensure we all remained aligned to the Trust’s wider procurement activities in respect of the purchase of land, construction of the hospital and the re-use and relocation of equipment;
• A completed Commercial Case that met the broader requirements of the Trust’s overall Outline Business Case, including supporting materials and analysis, and which aligned to the Treasury Green Book and Five Case Model; and
• Provision of various additional papers to support the OBC through the Trust’s governance and approvals processes.

The Results

We provided a fully developed Commercial Case and associated procurement strategy for the delivery of integrated digital services and innovative new technologies to support PAHT’s new build hospital project. We provided the Trust with a set of well-developed and substantiated delivery options to take forward for broader stakeholder consideration and ultimately, for approval by the Trust Board.