News in brief
Hospitals given green light to miss wait time targets: More than 50 hospitals in England have been given the green light to miss key waiting time targets this year to help ease their financial problems, reported the BBC. Fines for missing targets in A&E, cancer and routine operations have been scrapped altogether. And a new failure regime is being set up for the worst-performing trusts. The relaxation of rules over waiting times is the most radical element of the announcement made by bosses at the three national bodies that oversee the health service – NHS England and the regulators NHS Improvement and the Care Quality Commission. Hospitals have been struggling to hit their targets for some time and will now have to simply improve on their current performance to get their slice of the extra money being invested in the NHS this year. Each hospital has been given its own target for improvement, and crucially for a number, particularly in regards to A&E, it allows them to get the funding without achieving the official targets by March. NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens said this was a make-or-break period. But Nigel Edwards, of the Nuffield Trust think-tank, predicted the measures being taken on their own will not be enough. “My big worry is what happens next. I fear that in order for hospitals to virtually eradicate their deficits the next steps could be a series of brutal service reductions and bed closures – which will shock an unprepared public,” he said
NHS criticised for the bad health of its finances: The NHS has been criticised for its lack of a plan to return its finances to good health, as it emerged that it had diverted almost £1bn away from investment in order to balance its budget, reported The Financial Times (subscription required). In a report that highlighted the health service’s deep funding problems, the National Audit Office (NAO) said the NHS was relying on “a range of short-term measures to manage its budgetary position, but this is not a sustainable answer to the financial problems which it faces”. The criticism came as the NHS’s annual accounts were published. They showed that the service in England avoided busting its £114.7bn budget for the last financial year by a wafer-thin margin of £210m. NHS England received an extra £417m in National Insurance receipts and failed to tell the Treasury, which thus had no opportunity to claw back the money from the overall health settlement. The NAO said the department had ascribed the failure to follow normal practice by informing the Treasury to “an administrative error”. The auditors also suggested that some of the measures taken in order to balance the books this year could have long-term consequences. It highlighted the switching of £950m from the capital to the revenue budget. Long-term investment plans “have been set aside for the short-term goal of meeting day-to-day spending”, it said. Richard Murray, head of policy at The King’s Fund, said: “If the government is serious about restoring financial balance, it must review its priorities for the NHS and be honest with the public about what it can deliver with the money it has been allocated.”
NHS heavily criticised for lack of ambition to reduce bed-blocking: Thousands of older people are languishing unnecessarily in hospital because the NHS had shown a “striking” lack of ambition to discharge patients on time, according to MPs, reported The Telegraph. The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) accused NHS England of drastically underestimating the scale of bed-blocking, which it says is costing up to 2.7 million bed days a year. Its damning report blames trusts for using local inadequacies in adult social care as an excuse for failing to ensure patients are swiftly discharged once they become medically fit. Studies have found that older people can lose up to 5% of their muscle strength each day they stay in hospital, while research conducted in May estimated that approximately 6,000 patients are inappropriately stuck in hospital in England each day. The National Audit Office has said the practice costs taxpayers around £820m each year. PAC’s chair, Meg Hillier, said: “The Committee is vividly aware of the financial pressures facing the NHS but does not accept that maintaining the status quo is an adequate ambition, particularly when the consequences are additional costs running to hundreds of millions pounds. Blaming local circumstances for poor performance short-changes patients and is an unacceptable cop-out when the government has clear indicators of what works and the power to drive change.” Caroline Abrahams, charity Director at Age UK, said: “Keeping someone in hospital when they don’t need to be there is an awful situation and one that represents a staggering waste of public funds that also hurts vulnerable older people and their families.”
Patients face surgery axe after five years: NHS England has employed a private company to “cleanse” GPs’ patient lists, targeting those who have not had an appointment for more than five years, reported Sky News. Under the plans, people in this situation will be sent two letters asking them to respond, but if they do not reply saying they wish to remain registered with their GP, they will be axed from the surgery’s list. The idea is to find out whether patients have moved away from the area, left the country or died. GPs are paid an average of about £136 for every patient on their list and the NHS’s plans, which will be led by private company Capita, aim to cut costs. But Pulse magazine, which first revealed details of the plan, did an investigation showing that thousands of patients have already been wrongly removed from GPs’ lists. The Capita contract said that all GP practices would be contacted in the 11th month of every contract year and asked for lists of patients who had not seen their GP for five years or more. Capita would then contact each patient within 10 working days to confirm their address and registration details and, if there was no answer, the patient’s record would be put aside for removal within six months. Dr Robert Morley from the British Medical Association said: “Patients have a right to be registered unless they move or register elsewhere, even if they don’t need to or choose not to access services.”
NHS England chief addresses Brexit and integrated care challenges: NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens expects the majority of 44 Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs) setting out how authorities hope to meet the aims of the Five Year Forward View plan will be “well designed” as they are reviewed over the next two months, reported Government Computing. Speaking to the House of Commons Health Committee, Stevens spoke on a number of issues including financial sustainability, the importance of NHS infrastructure and integrated care investment, as well as how it was still too early to discuss the exact impacts of Brexit on funding. Stevens was asked to clarify how many of the 44 STP footprint areas were “well advanced” in setting out objectives for more technology-led integrated care. In response, NHS England’s chief executive said that a clearer picture was expected to be known from early next year. “I think the majority of the country will have well designed service improvement and change plans that [NHS England] will be able to back come October. In terms of the timetable, they have got to get financial modelling done by mid-September, October is when we are looking to sign off on the plans,” he said. Stevens said there was anticipated to be some variation between the 44 plans it received, noting that some areas will have worked together for a longer time and have a more articulated approach on locally implementing the Five Year Forward View.
Health budget rise ‘less than was promised’: Ministers in England have given the wrong impression about how much extra they are spending on health, MPs say, reported the BBC. The government made big play of the extra £8.4bn on top of inflation it was giving the NHS this parliament when it unveiled its spending plans last year. But the Health Select Committee said the true figure was about £4.5bn. The cross-party group of MPs said instead of focusing on the whole health budget ministers highlighted the amount going to the frontline via NHS England. In 2015-16 that was about £101bn, but that ignored £15bn of money set aside for other aspects such as training and public health. This is being cut once inflation is taken into account and means the total health budget rises from £116bn in 2015-16 to just over £120bn by the end of the parliament. Committee chair Dr Sarah Wollaston added: “Whilst the NHS has been treated favourably compared to many other departments, the increase in health funding is less than was promised if assessed by usual definitions.”
NHS mental health services to be given £1bn a year overhaul: The NHS has announced a five-year overhaul of mental health services as its chief executive admitted that only one in four children are receiving the support they need, reported The Telegraph. The £1bn a year programme will be aimed at expanding services, improving clinical standards, including introducing a maximum waiting time for mental health patients, as well as preventing ill health. It will be spent in addition to a cumulative £1.4bn already committed for children, young people and perinatal care. The three-pronged approach was recommended by a Government-appointed task force led by Paul Farmer, head of the charity Mind. The group is also calling for a “data revolution” to ensure transparency on spending and quality of care. Around £72m will also be spent better integrating physical and mental health services. NHS England chief Executive Simon Stevens said: “I don’t think anybody should pretend that by 2020 we would have got perfection in mental health services.” He said that at the moment one in four children get the help they need but the scheme should allow that number to rise to one in three. Claire Murdoch, NHS England’s new national director for mental health, said the sector had been a “long neglected” part of the NHS. “The costs of mental ill health – whether to the individual, their family or carer, the NHS or wider society – are stark. The need for action cannot be ignored. It is now up to all of us to make this a reality,” she added.
Failing CCGs could be ‘disbanded’ as 26 declared inadequate under new ratings regime: Twenty six clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) have been declared ‘inadequate’ by a new Ofsted-style ratings regime for the GP-led commissioning bodies, reported GPOnline. Nine CCGs have been placed into special measures by NHS England following the assessment of how commissioners have been discharging their responsibilities. Ten CCGs were rated “outstanding”, 82 “good” and 91 found to “require improvement.” For 2015/16 CCGs were rated according to five domains: well led organisation, delegated functions (including primary care commissioning where relevant), finance, performance and planning. CCGs are rated for each domain. NHS England said it would take action with each of the 26 CCG rated inadequate. NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens said: “Precisely because the pressures across the NHS are real and growing, we need to use this year both to stabilise finances and kick-start the wider changes everyone can see are needed. Most trusts and CCGs know what needs to get done to release funds for local reinvestment in better patient care and now is clearly the time to fire the starting gun. Today’s “reset” sets out the agreed legal responsibilities of individual NHS bodies to live within the funding parliament has decided should be available to the NHS this year. These individual accountabilities will be supplemented by the sustainability and transformation plans now being developed in communities across England, which will set out the wider, shared action they will take together to unleash broader improvement on health, care, and financial sustainability to 2020.”
Northern Ireland is ‘sleep-walking’ towards primary care crisis, says BMA: Almost three quarters of general practices in the north say they are “struggling”, according to the British Medical Association (BMA), reported The Irish News. It also claims nearly 10% are “barely coping” due to escalating problems such as growing patient list sizes, serious staffing gaps, growing paperwork and bureaucracy. The lobby organisation for the profession in Northern Ireland is urging the public to sign a petition calling on Stormont ministers to take action. The petition urges health minister Michelle O’Neill to invest a tenth of the healthcare budget on a “safe and sustainable GP service”, train more GPs and reduce paperwork and improve IT systems. In addition the Belfast Telegraph reported that according to new figures, almost 300 people spent more than half a day in emergency departments waiting to be treated and discharged or admitted to a ward. The figures come as Professor Rafael Bengoa handed over his key report on the restructuring of the health service to Ms O’Neill. He led an expert panel that will help shape the future of healthcare in Northern Ireland. The minister will then consider the proposals and publish her recommendations in the autumn. Professor Bengoa said: “Our task has been to make recommendations on a future health and social care model which will deliver a financially sustainable service, providing high quality outcomes in the face of changing patterns of demand. In the course of our work we have been able to talk to people from different parts of the health and social care system and we have been struck by the consistency of the messages we have received. There is a strong appetite for reform and there now seems to be a clear window of opportunity to harness this energy and drive transformation forward.”
MPs and health professionals ‘not confident’ in NHS savings plan: More than eight in 10 healthcare professionals are not confident the NHS can achieve a £22bn savings target, according to a survey, reported Supply Management. The poll of more than 400 people found 85% were either “not very confident” or “not at all confident” the health service can hit the target by 2020. The results come as MPs cast doubt on government NHS funding commitments and the achievability of the “efficiency challenge”, where £22bn needs to be saved by 2020-21 to close the gap between resources and patient needs. The survey, carried out ahead of the UK Health Show conference in September, found just one in 10 respondents were at least “fairly confident” that recommendations in Lord Carter’s review, which include procurement improvements, would be achieved. More than four in five respondents rated current NHS performance positively, though 56% were pessimistic about the future and a third disagreed that commissioning of services was carried out efficiently and effectively. More than a quarter expect commissioning to get worse. “The conclusion we draw from the evidence we have heard is that the proposed strategies for reducing costs – cutting the tariff price (albeit at a lower rate), strict pay restraint, imposing agency price caps and reducing capital spending – are not sustainable ways of securing long-term efficiencies,” said the report. “The NHS will need a new approach if it is to adapt to increasing patient demand and funding constraints.”
NHS regions will shift funding to primary care, Simon Stevens tells MPs: Simon Stevens said there was a lot of convergence among the 44 local plans being developed to deliver the Five Year Forward View around “bringing GP practices together, scaling them and integration with community nursing services,” reported GPOnline. Giving evidence to the House of Commons health select committee, Mr Stevens said as a result over the next three to five years more of the marginal funding increases would go into primary and community services. Mr Stevens said he was “quite encouraged” by how the conversations between health and care leaders were developing on the ground. The majority of the country, he said, would have “well designed service improvement and change plans that we will be able to back.” Mr Stevens revealed that NHS England would bring forward the annual commissioning cycle for 2017/18 and 2018/19 to be done by Christmas 2016, so local leaders will have from October to December to distribute funding for the two-year cycle and from “January onwards getting on with it”. Responding to MPs’ concerns over the NHS capital funding, which is set to remain flat in cash terms over the current spending review period to 2020/21, Mr Stevens said a “sizeable chunk” of this was being converted into revenue to support provider deficits.
Andy Murray becomes ambassador for digital health: Tennis star Andy Murray has teamed up with Scotland’s Digital Health & Care Institute (DHI) to highlight the potential of technology to provide more efficient and effective health and care services across the country, reported HealthITCentral. Murray’s involvement will raise awareness of the DHI’s work, as well as promoting skills and educational and career opportunities for young people. The DHI’s project portfolio is worth over £4m and includes in excess of 100 projects involving more than 50 companies, 15 of Scotland’s universities, 25 third sector organisations and more than 1,000 members from over 20 nations. Murray uses technology and data to improve his performance on court and has stated that maintaining his own health throughout the long tennis season is key to his success. Murray said: “My partnership with the DHI has come about because I am really interested in how digital technologies can improve health. I obviously have a personal interest in that area because anything that can improve my own health will only improve my performance on court. The work that DHI are doing is changing lives and solving some really important health and care challenges, at home and abroad, and I am proud to be supporting their work.” Justene Ewing, chief executive officer at DHI, said: “Our nation has a clear agenda to boost productivity through innovation and enterprise, so Scotland is the place to be supported and engaged in digital health and care. As a Scot with an international perspective and global recognition, we’re delighted that Andy sees the opportunity in supporting DHI’s aims of enabling dynamic and fast-paced transformation programmes for entrepreneurs to collaborate with the NHS in Scotland, third sector organisations, universities and citizens.”
System gets to the heart of cutting cardiac arrests: NHS Fife has won a digital health award after frontline doctors and nurses have delivered rapid improvements in patient safety by harnessing an early warning technology known as Patientrack, reported TheCourier.co.uk. The health board reduced cardiac arrests by more than two thirds in the busiest area of its only acute hospital. Among the immediate high impact findings first revealed by NHS Fife in March, it has also emerged that frontline staff have observed some of the most significant and immediate changes in clinical practice ever seen. Judges at the Holyrood Connect ICT awards recognised the results in improved care and named NHS Fife as winner of the 2016 award for digital health, beating several organisations to the prize. In addition the health board has also become a finalist in the UK’s EHI awards 2016 for the best use of IT to improve patient safety. Donald Kennedy, the managing director at Patientrack, said: “NHS Fife has delivered remarkable results for patient care in a matter of months with Patientrack, a trend which is continuing.” Dr Gavin Simpson, consultant critical care and anaesthetics and project lead at NHS Fife, added: “The introduction of Patientrack has meant that, for the first time, doctors and nurses can instantly see the sickest patients in the hospital in real-time, and are automatically alerted to intervene.”
‘No benefits’ from junior doctors’ contract imposition, says head of Royal College: Jeremy Hunt has been urged not to impose the new contract on junior doctors in an impassioned appeal from Professor Neena Modi, head of the Royal College of Paediatrics, reported Pulse. Hunt said the new contract is necessary to ensure adequate staffing levels to deliver a seven-day NHS, but junior doctors have said it will force them to work dangerously long hours. In a letter to the health secretary, Professor Modi said the contract is particularly damaging because NHS services are already “running on empty” because of its financial deficit and is likely to face further “severe financial pressures” following the UK’s vote to leave the European Union. She told Hunt: “At this time of national turmoil I ask you please to reflect. There are no benefits that will ensue from implementing this contract. Pull back from the brink of inflicting yet further damage, and instead secure an honourable place in history by restoring UK health services to be once more the envy of the world.” The British Medical Association and the government agreed on the latest version of the contract in breakthrough talks after a series of strikes, but doctors then rejected it in a referendum vote, leading Hunt to renew his decision to impose it.
Royal Brompton goes live with Lorenzo: Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust has gone-live with a Lorenzo patient administration system (PAS), jettisoning its old green screen system in the process, reported DigitalHealth.net. Chief information officer Joanna Smith said that migration at the London trust had begun, with all inpatient records successfully migrated to the new system. The migration of outpatient records ran into some issues, with 75% transferring to Lorenzo. The rest would be migrated through additional automatic and manual loads, but would not impact patient care, she said. Already the new Lorenzo PAS is proving a better tool than the trust’s previous, legacy CSC system, with clinicians inputting more information. Royal Brompton is one of the few trusts to adopt Lorenzo outside the National Programme for IT in North, Midlands and East and the subsequent 2012 agreement between CSC and the Department of Health. Lorenzo was selected in late 2014 after a competitive tender, but the trust decided not to deploy the system as a full electronic patient record. Lorenzo is a likely frontrunner to fill this role, as the trust was given full licensing rights when it selected the CSC product as its PAS. Switching PAS is just one of a flurry of changes at the trust, that is moving from “pretty old systems” and a lot of paper, to a more digital focus. A CSC spokesperson said: “We’ve worked closely with Royal Brompton and Harefield to achieve a successful go-live. It’s great to see another trust choosing Lorenzo.”
Three-year digital health project says online skills could save NHS millions: A training programme to help vulnerable people to use the internet to access healthcare services has saved the NHS as much as £6m in avoided GP and A&E visits in a year, according to a report published by the Tinder Foundation. PublicTechnology.net reported that the foundation, which is a digital inclusion charity, led the £2.7m, three-year widening digital participation programme with the NHS from July 2013. It aimed to help more than 220,000 people improve their digital skills so they could have access to the increasing number of health services provided online, and focused on those hardest to reach – for instance people with dementia, unpaid carers, those with learning difficulties and young people at risk of offending. According to the final report of the programme, the project benefited both the people involved in the training and frontline services, with an estimated £6m saving due to reduced visits to the GP or A&E in the programme’s final year. This breaks down as an estimated £3.7m saving in GP visits – the report said that 21% of those involved made fewer calls or visits to their GP – and £2.3m in reduced A&E visits, after 6% said they made fewer visits to A&E. Some 10% also made fewer calls to NHS 111. The report said that the savings represented a return on investment of £6.40 for every £1 invested in the third year of the programme.
Virtual reality healthcare, coming to Liverpool: Virtual reality will be tested as a care tool in Liverpool this year, both for treating patients and helping clinicians meet remotely, reported DigitalHealth.net. Dr Simon Bowers, vice chairman and clinical information management and technology lead at the Liverpool Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG), said the technology would be tested with small groups of patients by the end of the year. “This is something that people in this city are going to want to embrace, are going to want to get into, to manage all of their health and social care needs both transactional, with appointments, e-consultations, things like that, and also to get information pushed out to them,” he added. People who put on the Samsung Gear VR headset appeared as avatars sitting in a group in a virtual world. But crucially for its potential health applications, participants were transported to a board meeting room, where they could all view clinical information about a patient, such as imaging, projected onto a virtual screen. “Through VR, a cardiologist can see three or four patients through a VR multi-disciplinary team a lot quicker than he could actually see them face to face. The patient doesn’t have to park, they don’t get MRSA, the patient experience is much better,” said Bowers. There has been some evidence that VR can be used to treat mental illness, but it was still in that early disruptive phase. The VR experiments are being funded out of an existing CCG fund for assisted technology.
Opinion
PM sets tone for future of mental health
NHS England’s recently appointed national director for mental health, Claire Murdoch, looks at the changes in the pipeline.
Writing in a blog on the NHS England website, she says: “It is a time of considerable opportunity for improvement as we publish our Implementation Plan following the publication of the Mental Health Taskforce report earlier this year.
“Since coming into post six weeks ago, I have been impressed by the level of skill and passion demonstrated by my colleagues at NHS England. Of course, this same skill and passion is reflected across the country by the myriad of users, carers, clinical commissioners, providers and policy makers. Better mental health really is all our business.
“I was encouraged that the prime minster too, in her very first very speech mentioned mental health: ‘If you suffer from mental health problems, there’s not enough help to hand.’
“I think this is reflective of a growing recognition that mental health threads throughout life and we have to pay attention to it. Never has there been a time of such acknowledgement that improving mental health makes economic sense and supports better life chances.
“Cross governmental support is essential if we are to grasp issues of prevention, better integration between physical and mental health care and greater economic strength and prosperity. Education, employment, housing, tackling social isolation and inclusion are areas that require coherent policy and partnership working. This means the ability to collaborate and make change in a complex landscape is essential if we are to deliver better outcomes.”
Putting quality first: The value of technology in underpinning quality assurance
In this article, David Howard of McKesson outlines how NHS organisations can learn from international examples of where technology has helped to address some of the quality standards recently published by the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR).
“The RCR previously-published data revealing that 12% of UK hospitals don’t have an agreed policy for alerting clinicians when X-rays or scans contain critical or urgent findings. Worse still, only 7% of hospital departments surveyed boast an electronic system that not only alerts doctors, but also escalates activity and assures it’s actioned.
“If the health service really is serious about ensuring quality of service, NHS organisations are going to need to look seriously about strengthening their procedures because current approaches are falling short.
“In October 2014 an RCR survey of radiology departments in England revealed that tens of thousands of suspected cancer patients were being made to wait over a month for scan results due to delays in their reporting. The snapshot study had not been analysed for at least 30 days, raising serious concerns for patient safety.
“So, how can NHS organisations mitigate the risk of delayed diagnoses?
“One option might be to look at the recent work that’s been carried out in Ireland, where a radiology quality improvement plan orchestrated by the Health Services Executive (HSE) has transformed radiology services.
“The Radiology QI programme in Ireland is enabled by a centralised system that integrates with all imaging systems being used in local hospitals. The impact on the patient experience and patient outcomes is unquestionable. UK hospitals can learn much from the Irish experience.
“A common misconception within radiology is that quality assurance is too hard. With a national shortage of radiologists and increased pressure on the system, the profession understandably argues that measuring quality takes a disproportionate amount of time and is unsustainable.
“The Irish HSE took the strategic decision to keep quality and clinical information entirely separate. Its rationale was to implement a dedicated system for quality assurance rather than force additional functionality onto the back of existing radiology information systems.
“UK hospitals know they must do more to drive quality improvement and that, with increased pressure on diagnostic services, radiologists need support to ensure they manage their work burden and mitigate the risk of human error.”
A voice from Ireland – What’s in it for me?
Richard Corbridge, chief information officer for HSE Ireland, discusses digital identity in Ireland and gives examples of how to answer the paperless question.
“We try to deliver excellence in a healthcare system where paper is the trail of evidence and knowledge is represented by the identity of the patient recorded in ink. All this in a world where you can book a taxi via your mobile phone direct to where you are. In a system where we now strive for “no decision about me without me” the digital identity is crucial to the delivery of care.
“So how do we achieve a paperless healthcare system where we still need a wet ink signature to identify the patient, after all we are some way from bar coding patients in a sci-fi Agent 47 style!
“Digital identity powered by the patient’s desires could be the answer to the paperless question. If we offer the patient/citizen an integrated health system in return for a digital identity, what will the opt-out rate be? Ireland is trying to learn from other jurisdictions:
“Lesson 1 – We need to adopt assumed consent.
“Lesson 2 – It has to be informed by a very easy opt-out processes.
“Lesson 3 – What is in it for me?
“Digital identity in Ireland has leapt forward in the last 12 months with a public services identity platform applying concepts of safe level verification, built on the benefit to the citizen not the government or a need for efficiencies. The ability to adopt a ‘cloud first’ policy into health has been relatively straightforward.
“Ireland will start to offer citizens the ability to receive their own referral letters digitally. Putting that concept of ‘no decision about me without me’ at the centre as we move towards citizen access to the health record and a truly integrated care delivery based on information.
“The trend though leads us away from just access, how can I add to it, allow my personal systems to be informed by it, secure it, are all now becoming common conversations. Our vision of turning data into information to truly deliver system wide insight rings clear as a pathway for this.”
How to accelerate sales in tough financial times
Increasing sales when financial times are tough can prove challenging. Healthcare sales and marketing veteran and Highland Marketing CEO Mark Venables outlines how sales acceleration can help businesses grow in challenging times.
“Modern businesses have to move quickly to stay ahead of the competition. They need to be in front of potential customers when those needs translate into purchase intent. Being there at the right time is one step; being responsive is the next. With competitors at every turn, businesses have to move quickly to secure the deal.
“Sales acceleration is the essential concept that businesses must grasp to ensure they are in front of prospects when they are willing to buy.
“How does this work? It works by knowing the market, the message, and the medium required to get in front of the right person at the right time.
“Let’s take some recent work we have done with one of our clients. This particular client was looking to build market presence and generate leads in advance of a key conference.
“The first activity was to raise awareness within the target market. That meant conducting market research, and working with one of their existing customers to develop a case study to show the client’s product could help address local and national policy concerns.
“The second activity involved the core of what can best be termed sales acceleration. Using telemarketing and direct contact with key individuals, we were able to build on the awareness to help secure appointments with potential customers and crucial market influencers.
“Market insight was important, through desk research and talking to those involved in the field. Persistence was also key, as was being flexible to know that there are many individuals involved in decisions about our client’s solutions.
“This process might once have been termed business development. But, to me, putting potential customers in front of our clients at the right time and with the right support, is sales acceleration.
“The process is crucial in these tough financial times. Any money invested in sales and marketing has to deliver a return on investment.
“Whatever the scale, sales acceleration is very often the best way to generate sales and leads in as short a time as possible. Businesses should embrace the fact that it is the speed of sale that will help them survive in these challenging financial times.”
Highland Marketing blog
In this week’s blog Highland Marketing account executive Hetty Simmonds calls on us all to embrace interoperability to advance the digital health agenda.
