News / SBS achieves savings and looks for more

By Seamus Ward

NHS Shared Business Services (SBS) has reached its target of delivering £224m of cost and efficiency savings to the NHS a year earlier than planned and is aiming to increase the total to £1bn by 2020.

SBS, a joint venture between the Department of Health and Steria, provides business support to NHS clients, including finance and accounting services.

It was established in 2005 with a commitment to deliver £224m in savings within 10 years. Having now reached that target, it said it intended to build on the savings already achieved by helping the NHS to save a further £775m over the next seven years.

SBS chief executive John Neilson told Healthcare Finance the 2020 target was ‘an aspirational target to aim at that would make a big difference to the NHS’.

There would be a number of elements to its plan to increase savings over the next seven years. The first tranche of savings would come from rolling forward the benefits customers already receive.

‘That will probably take us just over half way to the £1bn,’ he said. ‘The rest is less clear and we have started to develop a range of initiatives that would contribute towards that.’

It provides financial services to all commissioning organisations and around 30% of providers. Last month, Central and North West London NHS Foundation trust awarded SBS a contract for its finance and accounting services.

As well as growing its client base, SBS could expand the range of services those clients take.

‘Over the last 15 months, we have been speaking to much larger trusts than we have historically and they are interested in making bigger savings in one hit,’ he said.

Last year, Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent Partnership Trust became the first to take up all of SBS’s provider services – finance and accounting, employment and procurement services.

Part of the efficiencies would come through growth of its core activities of finance and payroll and newer activities such as its human resources services.

Mr Neilson said SBS had high hopes for its procurement service. In the retail sector, there is almost 100% purchase order compliance, but in the NHS this can be as low as 10%. NHS organisations would be able to track spend more effectively just by improving procurement practices the NHS, he said.

SBS could also expand into new areas. ‘We are interested in areas such as clinical coding, and there are other areas that could form a substantial part of efficiency savings, including leveraging data,’ Mr Neilson added.