Your golden (or silver) ticket to working with the NHS
Breaking into the NHS market can be a significant challenge for Pharma, MedTech, and Device companies due to the complex needs and priorities of the NHS. The primary problem is understanding what the NHS truly wants and how to align your products with their specific issues. Without this insight, even the most innovative and promising solutions can fail to gain traction.
My online learning packages, are designed to address this problem, offering the critical knowledge needed to navigate and meet NHS demands effectively.
I want to take the opportunity to explain some of my thinking in developing – alongside the Life Science Access Academy – the online learning packages which you can find here on my website.
Gold package
The individual or team gold package offers Pharma, MedTech, and Device companies direct access to my expertise, providing a complete understanding of NHS needs. This package includes monthly coaching and mentoring, helping you to tap into the benefit of my experience as an NHS Management Consultant so you can tailor your approach to align with NHS priorities.
The goal is to develop projects that either support your clients or introduce new opportunities within my NHS client base. I carefully select the right opportunities for each company, facilitate introductions, and work to get projects moving forward.
Four key areas of focus
The programme builds on my extensive NHS experience, sharing current insights from integrated care system leads, place leads, primary care networks, GP federations, hospital trusts, and mental health trusts. My contacts span across England, ensuring comprehensive support. Everything I do and everything that is included in the programme follows the same system and process that I use within my own NHS work.
We focus on four specific areas:
Parking the product – Leaving the product at the front door and working out what the problem is that we solve for the NHS. If the NHS has engaged with a particular pharmaceutical medical technology or device company, what problem does that company solve for them? Can we demonstrate that by working with this particular company, we can improve patient outcomes?
Reduction in workload – As a result of that improvement in patient outcome, are we going to be able to demonstrate a reduction in GP and then wider practice team workload?
Read my blog here on why workload solutions are so important to the NHS
Impact on income – Is income going up? Is it going down? Is it neutral to income? Most projects, to be honest, are neutral to income, it doesn’t increase it, but it doesn’t reduce it either. But – because of the two per cent contract imposition in general practice this year, a topic I’ll be coming back to in another blog – I am now being asked if there are projects that might increase income.
Have we got or can we create a workforce to deliver the project? – This is where I use enhanced access – that’s Monday to Friday, 6,30pm to 8pm, and Saturday 9am to 5pm. A lot of the networks will use that time just for acute on-the-day appointments, overspill from the day as the practices fill up. But a number of them are now using those hours for planned care projects.
And that’s where a project with a Pharma, MedTech or device company might really successfully fit. Because if we can show we can improve the patient outcome, we can reduce the GP and practice team workload and there’s no negative impact on income, then this is a really good way to create the workforce to get the work done to drive improvement.
Added value makes them much more likely to want to work with you
If we were to get clever about it, we might put some services in there that also increase income because then you’ve got the benefit of the enhanced access income being used to pay the staff, meaning that any additional income then becomes profit that can go back into the practices that are part of the network. That just needs a little bit of careful handling, which is actually very straightforward to do.
I also aim to convert every project I work with into a two-cycle CQC audit for the practices involved. That adds huge value for them, but it doesn’t change the project at all.
Additionally, where we’ve got training practices, they’re going to have trainee GPs, trainee nurses and trainee pharmacists who all need auditing as part of their training. That means even more value is added and the project is probably more important to the NHS than it is to the industry partner because of that outcome.
Helping the trainees and adding a two-cycle CQC audit adds tremendous value without actually changing the original project—everybody wins.
Read my expert guide on convincing the NHS to work with you here
Always lead with the problem you solve
Between January and December 2023, I landed 53 projects within my NHS customer base for my Pharma, MedTech and Device clients.
The total value of that is multi millions of pounds, and included within that is one single project with a return on investment of £1.5million. That figure is still growing because the product in question has still got several years of patent life left.
These projects covered a huge range of different areas, from wound care to allergic rhinitis, aero allergens, lipid management, heart failure, mental health, chronic kidney disease, diabetes and numerous projects in women’s health including LARC, menopause, heavy menstrual bleeding and wider sexual health services.
For every single one of that wide range of projects, the focus was purely on the problem we were able to solve for the NHS. We never led with the product because that’s not how you get through the door and get a dialogue started up.
Absolutely key for those that have already subscribed either to the silver and gold packages – whether it’s an individual gold or a team gold package – is that they gain access to in-depth customer interviews I have conducted with a dozen of my NHS customers.
Time and time and time again, the message relayed is, don’t lead with the product. Because if you do that, they’re going to forget the entire conversation within minutes. They want to hear about the problem you will solve and then they will engage.
The reason they forget about a hard sales pitch the moment you walk out of the door is you’re not addressing anything on their agenda. Leading with a product means the NHS decision maker has to work out where to put that product on the pathways. And they don’t have the time or the headspace to do that.
I can help you convince the decision makers
For everyone who has access to the online learning gold and silver packages – especially in the gold package which offers monthly coaching and mentoring – the goal is to take the projects from a blank canvas to develop a clear and compelling strategy, a case for change, the full business case if that’s what’s required, that gets them in front of the decision makers.
They get all my time and input to help them make that happen. And what we then look to do is secure agreement to implement.
If you are interested in the coaching and mentoring packages mentioned in this article or want to understand more about how it all works, you are very welcome to make contact with any questions. Equally if you want to get online with myself and Ian Chamberlain from the Life Science Access Academy for a demonstration of the packages, we are very happy to do that.
Scott McKenzie helps pharmaceutical, medical technology, and appliance firms get their products and services in front of the right NHS decision makers. He helped to land no fewer than 53 new projects with the NHS in 2023 alone and has now developed a 12-month mentorship programme that helps individuals and teams get straight to the heart of the challenges of selling to the NHS. If you want to get your products fully embedded into treatment pathways, Scott can help. Get unprecedented access to key customer insights, proven tools, resources and strategies plus 1-2-1 coaching and decision-maker introductions to finally get your project over the line. Find out more here.