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John Torrie, Steria's UK chief executive, said that NHS Shared Business Services (SBS) has come "very close" to signing deals with public bodies from outside health for its back office processing services, including finance, accounting and human resources.
"There have been some parts of the public sector that have been been extremely interesting," Torrie told SmartHealthcare.com. "We got very close to several authorities committing." He added that the organisations in question were not local authorities, but would not provide any further information.
However, the discussions foundered over legal questions that have been raised over whether the joint venture agreement between the Department of Health and Xansa, which was bought by Steria in 2007, could allow non-NHS organisations to use its services. "On that basis, no-one would use it," Torrie said, based on the fear that competitors would challenge any contracts awarded, leading to procurements having to be retendered.
He said that government could remove this obstacle by making it clear that any public sector organisation could use the joint venture, which returns some profits to the government. "If you really want to save some money, that is an impediment," he said. "Let's remove it."
SBS now serves 130 trusts. Given the legal glitch, Torrie said Steria is aiming to set up similar but separate organisations for other parts of the public sector, including police authorities. "We need to find a vehicle to do that," he said.
Steria claims that NHS trusts using SBS cut costs by a fifth, benefit from better quality data processing and receive extensive business intelligence reporting. The work is carried out in processing centres in Bristol, Leeds and India, where the firm has extensive operations. "The quality of service has gone sky high," Torrie said of trusts that use SBS. "I have one example of shared services, where I defy anyone to say it hasn't delivered what it says on the tin."
Torrie said the government could also increase NHS savings by forcing trusts to move to SBS, as was originally the plan for shared services. "I'd like mandation, but I'd like a lot of things," he said. "Mandation is not a word that the government finds easy."
SBS also claims it could improve NHS efficiency in the longer term by making data derived from trusts' finances available for comparison, given that it is processed using a common platform. Steria allows private sector clients of similar services to compare the financial performance of their divisions, but is not allowed to run comparisons of NHS trusts.
"This is where you can really unlock the value of a shared service centre," Torrie said.
He added that Steria has increased the rate of growth of SBS since it bought Xansa. "SBS was stalling a bit at the time we acquired Xansa. Our role was to re-engineer the sales effort," he said. "It's taken ages to get this to profit."
Torrie added that despite having SBS as a case study, some public sector organisations are not interested in shared services that involve jobs being relocated. "Where we struggle is when public sector organisations have, as a part of their mission statement, to be the largest local employer," he said, adding that this was a real case, but one that he was not prepared to identify. "Those kinds of things, we haven't got an answer for."
He added concerns that politicians are talking about cutting IT programmes as a way of saving money following an election, when such projects have great potential to provide efficiency savings. "There's a confusion about what will happen," he said.
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