‘It’s great to be within a smaller team where we’re all in it together working alongside our NHS and private sector partners, with the patient sitting as the north star guiding everything we do.’
Can you tell us a little about your professional background, and what you find most satisfying about working at Feedback Medical?
I’ve always worked as a supplier and, most importantly, a partner to the NHS and private health care providers. I started out on my healthcare journey within the pharmaceutical industry before moving on to the medical device sector. Having previously worked for two very large healthcare supply organisations in several positions including regional sales team leadership & national commercial excellence roles, it’s been a very refreshing and exciting change to become part of the more agile and solutions-driven Feedback Medical team
The recipe for success remains the same, building and maintaining strong, symbiotic relationships underpinned by mutual trust. Developing strong alliances within the NHS and private healthcare sector that are mutually beneficial and supportive, not only in product solution offerings, but also with operational support and, in some cases, managed service support.
Feedback Medical is a young and agile organisation, it’s great to be within a team where everyone in the team is open to learn, adapt and flex to deliver the best solution for our customers and, most importantly the patients they care for.
We work alongside our NHS and private sector partners, with the patient sitting as the north star guiding everything we do. Unlike a larger corporate, we’re able to learn and respond quickly to what our customers are telling us, the ability to be responsive to our customers’ changing needs is vital.
What are the key challenges and considerations when working with partners in the private sector?
We spoke earlier about agility – that can sometimes be a differentiating factor between the private sector and the NHS. There are plenty of people within the NHS who would certainly like to be more agile in the way that they can operate, however, due to size and complexity of the NHS as a system, this can sometimes prove challenging.
While there are also considerably sized healthcare organisations in the private sector, the agility is there, enabling them to move more quickly, responding to what patients need and their payors want sets the foundations for dynamic partnership working.
What value are different types of private care providers deriving from their use of Bleepa?
The private sector has seen demand for their services consistently increase over the last few years, in some cases this demand is now overtaking pre-COVID levels. In 2023 alone we saw a seven per cent rise in private admissions, bringing the total number of admissions to around 890,000. Even within our current, challenging economic environment, we continue to see increasing numbers of both private medical insurance and self-pay cases.
All of this means that many consultants working across both the NHS and the private sector are finding that the demands on their time are relentless. One of the reasons Bleepa offers such an advantage for private hospital groups is that those consultants, who may not be physically on-premises due to their NHS work or other commitments, can still actively take part in multi-disciplinary team meetings remotely.
Bleepa® enables private sector clinicians to view patient notes, DICOM imaging & test results and respond in a robust secure and compliant chat function enabling asynchronous collaboration with colleagues. We are hearing from our private hospital group partners that consultants really value the ability to have these vital collaborative discussions asynchronously, at a time & place that suits their work plan.
Finally, how has Bleepa® helped private care providers in their safety and quality improvement journeys?
From an information governance perspective everything that is shared in Bleepa stays there, nothing is ever stored on a user’s device – the system is completely secure, meeting all the necessary ISO standards and more.
Historically, multi-disciplinary team (MDT) meetings within the private health sector have been difficult to undertake, largely due to a lack of relevant clinicians and professionals being in the same room. Even when these do take place auditing of the MDTs is challenging.
Bleepa® enables clinicians to securely conduct asynchronous MDT collaboration with access to all the relevant information, crucially it also creates an auditable trail. Upon conclusion of any given patient episode, all the information around the patient episode is wrapped up into a PDF document and uploaded into a patient’s records, enabling robust audit functionality. Bleepa can be a vital tool in any care organisation’s quality improvement processes.
The dashboard views in Bleepa ensure breech alerts are set in place in line with best practice guidelines proactively managing case load. Alerts and reminders are also enabled to alert clinicians to tasks, supporting an expedited patient care journey. The dashboard view within Bleepa® enables management teams to gain an overview of performance against standards of care, proactively managing any potential breeches to these.
Want to find out more about Bleepa?
Watch our introducing Bleepa video for a step-by-step guide to how we provide the digital infrastructure for effective, secure and flexible multi-disciplinary working.
Read about Feedback Medical CEO Dr Tom Oakley’s contribution to the All Party Parliamentary Group for Diagnostics
Read the previous entries in our staff expertise series:
A conversation with Richard Dulcamara, NHS Partnerships Lead