Lord Hunt of Kings Heath – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Hunt of Kings Heath on 2016-02-09.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how NHS England are ensuring that there is no conflict in how Bain and Company supports both vanguards in their application for funds, and NHS England in deciding how to allocate funds.
Lord Prior of Brampton
The Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) commissioned Bain and Company to support vanguards as an extension to work previously commissioned from the company as part of a programme called Future Focused Finance, an initiative sponsored by the Department of Health and arm’s length bodies. This earlier work for the HFMA had focused on the design of a value-based decision effectiveness tool, piloted in Mid-Cheshire and Liverpool. The HFMA, in partnership with NHS England, commissioned the extension to this work so that the tool could be used to support value-based decision-making in the 2016-17 New Care Models programme.
Alternatives were not sought from competitors because the vanguard support built on the original Bain and Company work for the HFMA.
The value of the vanguard support contract is £650,000. Value for money was obtained by negotiation, having been benchmarked with other commissions made by the National Health Service to external health consultancies.
As part of the contract, Bain and Company will be handing over its approach to NHS England, so that NHS England can support other areas in implementing new care models.
Bain and Company has not been commissioned to assess evidence to support transformation and potential for replication of new care models in other areas. The company is commissioned to develop and implement a framework that appropriately experienced NHS staff can use to assess such evidence. Intellectual property rights in respect of the framework in the future are assigned to HFMA under the terms of the contract. The NHS is entitled to use the framework free of charge in perpetuity.
Bain and Company is involved in the development of the tool used to make the assessment, and in the implementation of the process to use that tool. The company is specifically commissioned to help vanguard sites to use the tool and to summarise the resulting value propositions to facilitate decision-making by NHS England.
No conflict of interest arises as decisions concerning funding allocations for individual vanguards are made by NHS England’s Executive Team and Investment Committee and not Bain and Company.
