I'm at the eyeforpharma Responding to NHS Change conference taking place in London which brings together pharma industry, the NHS and private healthcare to discuss the changes in the UK healthcare environment and how pharma should be reacting.
One of the presentations which generated quite a numebr of questions was from Mike Farrar, Chief Executive of the North West Strategic Health Authority. Mike talked about how he sees pharma and the NHS working together - broadly speaking he said it should be looked at like any other B2B partnership where common goals are shared. The three purposes he believed pharma and the NHS shared were public protection, social value and market performance and as long as these are transparent and shared with both parties, the partnership would be on it's way to succeeding. Mike is clearly forward thinking in his approach and a couple of pharma delegates asked how they could get their SHA's to think like he does!
I wonder however how transparent pharma can actually be given the ABPI code of conduct and whether what actually comes out of any proposal from pharma to PCT or SHAs is a washed down version of what they actually want to achieve.
What I believe also hinders progress in industry-NHS partnership is a clear understanding of what the NHS actually wants. It is true, pharma hasn't been that great at understanding the customer and finding out what their key issues are, however does the NHS? At the conference I spoke to a senior-level pharma executive who said that they have been working with a PCT for a year or so now and despite more than a handful of meetings, several proposals and different people in his team taking charge, they are no further down the line when it comes to striking up a partnership. The only possible reason he can think of is that they don't really know what they want themselves.
The conference continues on this afternoon so I am looking forward to finding out whether anyone else shares the same views as me....
Pharma/ NHS Partnership working
I think it's not so much that the NHS doesn't know what it wants, but rather it doesn't know how to go about the partnership process.
NHS managers have a wealth of experience of partnering with other public sector organisations and voluntary and community groups, but when it comes to public / commercial sector partnerships they are still relatively inexperienced and uncertain.
In my work with the National Social Marketing Centre (www.nsmcentre.org.uk) I recently completed a study of public/ commercial partnership working which revealed that whilst, on the whole, the NHS is keen to partner with a wide range of commercial sector partners (retailers, pharmacy, and even pharma) there is still a degree of fear and mistrust of these 'giants' and also concern about public perceptions of getting too 'close'.
It seems that partnering skills development and partnership development toolkits would be welcomed.
That said, there is lots of good work in the early stages of development, and I think there will be some excellent opportunities for pharma to work with the NHS more closely in the future.
Di Stafford is Director of The Patient Practice Ltd, a consultancy specialising in patient marketing, communications and relationship management. www.thepatientpractice.com
Friendly assist
I whole heartedly agree. But what an organization (particularly one as complex as the NHS) "wants" is almost always complicated by many internal competing and often contradictory agendas. And when that organization is a government agency defining its "wants" can be exponentially more complex. Pharmas, however, are no strangers to organizational complexity or politics and may well to draw on their own internal experience with these challenges to assist the NHS (and other organizations like it) to determine its "wants." That would be a true value-added service.