With neighbourhood care models set to serve communities of 50,000 and digital tools reshaping delivery, the NHS’s next decade will succeed only if its hidden infrastructure keeps pace
Reading the NHS Impact Statement published this week that accompanies the NHS 10-Year Health Plan, I was struck by something that rarely makes headlines: the future of care depends as much on what happens behind the scenes as on what patients see at the front door.
The document sets out an ambitious vision. Neighbourhood health services for communities of around 50,000 people, more care delivered closer to home, and a growing role for digital tools and automation. It also acknowledges, quite openly, that delivering this will rely on productivity improvements, better use of resources, and consistent ways of working.
That’s an honest reflection of where the NHS is today. And it matters, because as care becomes more local and more personalised, the systems that support that care need to become more joined-up, not less. You can’t decentralise delivery and still run dozens of separate corporate functions without paying a price in complexity, cost, and capacity.
This is where shared services (and long-term partnerships) play a quiet but critical role. When organisations come together to share finance, workforce, procurement, digital, and analytics services, it’s not just about efficiency. It’s about creating the headroom that allows clinical and operational teams to focus on redesigning care and supporting patients, rather than worrying about whether the basics will hold.
The Impact Statement assumes widespread use of automation, better data, and more consistent processes. Those things don’t happen by accident. They happen when systems are designed once, invested in properly, and used at scale; something individual organisations often struggle to do alone. Joint ventures add something else too – stability. In a decade-long programme of change, having partners who can invest, share risk, and stay the course creates confidence that transformation isn’t just a short-term initiative, but something built to last.
For me, the takeaway is simple: the NHS’s next decade won’t just be defined by clinical breakthroughs. It will hinge on the strength of the systems that hold it together. Shared services may not be the most visible part of that story, but they are increasingly one of the most important
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by Raine Pell, Director of Marketing and Communications |
