18 Week Support, a team of experienced NHS professionals partnering with NHS trusts on elective care pathways, appointed Whitehouse Communications to elevate insourcing as a practical solution to the NHS waiting list crisis. The campaign secured a landmark change to the official NHS guidance on insourcing and established 18 Week Support as a key stakeholder in the development of insourcing policy at the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England.
The challenge
18 Week Support is a team of experienced NHS professionals who partner with NHS trusts to manage elective care pathways and help trusts achieve the 18-week waiting time target, improving the lives of patients and their families. The organisation works within the healthcare system as a market leader in insourcing, helping to address the NHS waiting list crisis.
18 Week Support appointed Whitehouse Communications to elevate insourcing as a practical solution to the NHS waiting list crisis among policymakers and NHS England (NHSE) decision-makers, and to raise awareness of the organisation as a market leader in insourcing within the healthcare system. The core challenge was that the official NHS guidance on insourcing did not accurately reflect the potential of the sector or portray a positive view of how insourcing arrangements can help trusts.
Our approach
Whitehouse Communications delivered an extensive policy audit to identify the campaign’s key policy objectives, focused on demonstrating the value of insourcing to help NHS trusts tackle their elective waiting lists.
The work focused on:
- Developing a detailed political briefing setting out a clear narrative and data on the importance of insourcing, its benefits and the challenges the sector faces, alongside clear policy objectives for how those challenges could be addressed.
- Building an extensive stakeholder map and tailored engagement plan, reaching out to key figures in government, NHS England (NHSE) and Parliament, with each parliamentary approach personalised using waiting list statistics from the local NHS trust in each MP’s constituency.
- Securing meetings with parliamentarians who agreed to champion the insourcing sector in Parliament and to write to their local NHS trust raising the concerns of the campaign.
- Engaging directly with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), securing a meeting with the Director General for NHS Policy and Performance and establishing 18 Week Support as a key stakeholder in the development of insourcing policy.
- Coordinating agreement across DHSC, NHSE and key parliamentarians on the need to change the NHS guidance on insourcing, and liaising directly with the NHS elective recovery team to help draft specific recommendations for changes to the official guidance.
The outcome
As a direct result of the campaign, the official NHS guidance on insourcing was updated to reflect the potential of insourcing for helping NHS trusts eliminate their waiting lists. The new language in the guidance ensures that trusts are better informed about the benefits of insourcing in tackling elective waiting lists.
The campaign also established 18 Week Support as a key stakeholder in the development of NHS insourcing policy, creating a platform for continued engagement with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), NHS England (NHSE) and parliamentarians on the future of elective recovery.
