Efficient and effective family health service supplier

15/12/2010

A recent benchmarking review of primary care support services (or Family Health Services (FHS) functions) provided by Anglia Support Partnership (ASP) to five PCTs in Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, confirms that ASP is one of the most efficient providers of these services in the country.

The review included contributions from 20 participant FHS Providers from a range of configurations serving 83 PCTs / Local Health Boards, and a combined population of over 30 million registered patients.

The review, undertaken by Benchmark Management Consulting Ltd, delivered a positive report of ASP benchmarked against over half of the UK FHS sector. The review could assist PCT providers in deciding whether the move to shared services is likely to be financially beneficial and is a positive promotion of ASP Primary Care Services.

The FHS Sector supports many hundreds of business processes around managing GP patient registrations, administering national screening programmes, paying the four contractor professions, and administering primary care contracts and performers lists. FHS is a high volume business that processes many millions of transactions each year. ASP currently provides services to around four per cent of the national market for FHS functions.

Key statistics for ASP

• Registration staffing costs are below NHS average levels
• Payments costs are around 25% lower than NHS average levels
• Overall costs are in the lowest quartile and over a quarter lower than NHS average rates
• Good benchmarking performance levels have consistently been demonstrated for FHS functions, delivering savings to customer organisations since ASP’s inception