Background

18 Week Support are a team of experienced NHS professionals who partner with NHS trusts to manage elective pathways, achieve their target of an 18 week waiting time, and improve the lives of patients and their families. 18 Week Support approached us as they were looking to elevate insourcing as a practical solution to the NHS waiting list crisis amongst policymakers and NHSE decisionmakers and wanted to raise awareness of 18 Week Support as market leaders in insourcing within the healthcare system.

Our Public Affairs Strategy

Whitehouse developed an extensive policy audit which led to an identification of our key policy objectives. Primarily, that the NHS guidance on insourcing did not accurately reflect the potential of the sector and did not portray a positive view of how insourcing arrangements can help trusts.

We developed a detailed core political briefing, setting out a clear narrative and data on the importance of insourcing, its benefits and the challenges the sector currently faces. The briefing also included our clear policy objectives on how the challenges can be addressed.

With our narrative in place, we put together an extensive stakeholder map, and began a plan of engagement, reaching out to key figures within government, NHSE, and parliament. We tailored each specific approach email using key data of waiting list statistics in the local trust of each parliamentarian’s constituency. This led to several meetings with parliamentarians who agreed to champion the insourcing sector in Parliament, as well as write to their local Trust raising our concerns.

In tandem, we also reached out directly to DHSC, which led to securing a meeting with the Director General for NHS Policy and Performance. As a result of this positive meeting, we established 18 Week Support as a key stakeholder in the development of insourcing policy.

Through our extensive engagement plan, we coordinated agreement across DHSC, NHSE and key parliamentarians to change the NHS guidance on the use of insourcing. We liaised directly by the NHS elective recovery team and helped to draft specific recommendations for changes to the official NHS guidance on insourcing.

Outcome

As a result of our strategy, influencing and engagement, the official NHS guidance on insourcing to NHS trusts has now been updated to reflect the huge potential of insourcing for helping trusts eliminate their waiting lists. The impact of our campaign can be seen from the new language in the guidance document which means that trusts are now better informed of the benefits of insourcing.

Get in touch at info@whitehousecomms.com to learn more about how we can help your organisation achieve its goals.