Healthcare efficiency
l Distributed leadership: Shared ownership across the Trust.
l Courageous risk appetite: Willingness to innovate and learn from mistakes.
l Workforce care: Listening to hear with curiosity and showing kindness.
Unlocking trapped value: where is the money going? Mark Jennings, Chief Solutions and Services Officer, Strasys, made a data-led case for redefining value in healthcare. “If I ran the NHS,” he said, “I’d ask two questions: 1. Where is the money going? 2. What are we getting for it?” He described how Strasys has mapped all
English acute Trusts by expenditure and activity, with a stark finding: “The largest Trusts with the most resource are among the least efficient.” He went on to say that there is something
very wrong with a system when “the more you spend, the less you get”. A focus on getting the largest 13 Trusts to the productivity of the 104 smaller Trusts could save the NHS £8bn a year. This inefficiency is even more striking when adjusting for disease prevalence. The Strasys proprietary Health Alpha metric shows that larger Trusts often underperform when delivering outcomes relative to the health challenges in their local populations. He shared a striking statistic: improving the
outcome performance of the 11 largest Trusts could result in 1,800 lives saved annually. To track progress, he has created a Strasys Value Index, measuring productivity and quality per £1,000 spent. The takeaway? “Variation is opportunity. And the NHS is rich with variation.” In every region of England, the lowest performing Trust is the largest or second largest. Conversely, Barnsley, rated “Good” by the CQC, ranks #1 on Strasys’ index — proof that smaller, focused Trusts can outperform giants.
Care models built around buildings are obsolete Mark Jennings called for a radical re-think of how care is structured. He criticised systems built around hospitals and specialties, rather than the actual needs of patients. The Strasys approach reverses this, starting with patient segments and building models of care tailored to them, not institutions. Three steps summarise this logic:
1. Start with patient need. 2. Organise care around that need. 3. Measure value relative to cost.
“The current model isn’t delivering the best care. In fact, the organisations receiving the most money are often furthest from where they need to be.”
Mark Jennings He warned that medical advances and
technology will continue to drive up cost, so the only way to make room for progress is to become ruthlessly efficient today.
Innovation needs permission and courage A recurring theme across the webinar was the call for bold, risk-tolerant leadership. Professor Nizam Mamode described the hostile environment for innovation, where it takes more than a year to approve even minor changes and innovation in practice feels harder to do than 20 years ago. Mark Jennings and Dame Jo Williams both argued that transformation cannot wait for structural reform or funding windfalls. “We’ve been told repeatedly now that there is
no more money — and that’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Mark Jennings said. “Because it forces us to confront a broken model.” The group agreed that to drive innovation, leaders must: l Accept risk as part of doing business. l Decentralise decision-making.
Naeem Younis
l Focus on outcomes, not just inputs or activity. l Listen deeply to both staff and patients.
Final thoughts: innovation through constraints In the absence of new money, true innovation becomes possible. By aligning around clear vision, listening to patients, measuring what matters, and addressing inefficiency with urgency, the NHS can thrive — not despite constraints, but because of them. As Naeem Younis, CE of Strasys and webinar
chair noted at the outset: “We all know the issues. The question is what
are we going to do now? It’s time to move from talk to action.”
And the action, as every speaker agreed, starts with thinking differently. This summary encapsulates the views shared
by NHS and healthcare experts during the Strasys Thinking Differently webinar, highlighting the urgent need for transformation within the NHS to adapt to new challenges and ensure its long-term sustainability.
Further information Strasys, a leading analytics and innovation agency, launched their “Thinking Differently” webinar series in March 2024, covering the pertinent topics being discussed in boardrooms – from workforce, inequalities to productivity.
l Watch the recording
https://www.strasys.uk/ the-10-year-health-plan-how-will-it-reduce- unwarranted-variation-in-care/
l Read new Nuffield Trust research https://
www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/resource/ down-payment-or-making-ends-meet-nhs- financial-pressures-in-the-run-up-to-the- spending-review
l See previous and future events
www.strasys. uk/events/
l Learn more about the innovative Strasys tools and methods at:
hello@strasys.uk
October 2025 I
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