McKesson sees shared services growth

McKesson has announced a 200% growth in its Shared Services over the past 12 months.

The Healthcare and IT solutions and services provider has won ten out of 11 contracts in open tender and is now providing HR and payroll services to more than 107,000 staff across the NHS.

Almost 40 trusts are now using McKesson’s centralised approach in the hope that it will deliver workforce efficiencies.

Adrian Wookey, vice president of service delivery for McKesson, told E-Health Insider: “This is really exceptional growth and we do not see any sign of it changing. More and more organisations are expressing an interest in the benefits of outsourcing their services.”

McKesson developed and now runs the NHS Electronic Staff Record under a national Department of Health contract. McKesson Shared Services provides first-line support for the administrative tasks associated with the day-to-day functions of HR and payroll using the system.

McKesson also provides trusts with professional consultancy and software solutions, if needed, in order to improve efficiency.

“Just under 10% of NHS staff are using our Shared Services for HR and payroll management, which is an incredibly strong number,” Wookey added.

The growth has coincided with support from the Treasury and DH for trusts to outsource their ‘back office’ functions as a way of making savings in the coming financial crunch.

In December, The Operating Framework for the NHS in England 2009-10 encouraged the use of shared services to help NHS organisations make “substantial efficiency savings.”

Two months later, NHS chief executive David Nicholson wrote to trust chief executives encouraging them to make greater use of shared services, and advising that it could free up cash for patient care.

More recently the Treasury’s Operational Efficiency Programme recommended that £7.2 billion of annual efficiency savings could be achieved on government IT and back-office operations.

It detailed that the health sector “should accelerate the use of shared services both between similar bodies and across services in a geographical area.”

However, Wookey told EHI that McKesson did not need such reports to spur interest in shared services.

He said: “The interest absolutely started before then. NHS organisations recognised that McKesson is exceedingly well placed to eliminate manual processes, drive productivity, reduce costs and allow them to redeploy staff where needed.”

Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has been signed up to McKesson shared services for more than two years.

Andrew Burrage, payroll liaison manager at the trust, said: “Since McKesson has taken over our payroll and pension service delivery we have seen improvements in service delivery and accuracy.”

Link: McKesson