Our customer-focused approach
NECS has a unique governance model in that we are customer-owned and believe we are the only organisation of its kind in the NHS.
Our Customer Ownership model is a defining feature of our success. Customer Directors sit in the majority on the NECS Board and put the interests of the business ahead of themselves as individual customers. They control the strategic direction of the business, and act as guardians of our vision, mission and social purpose.
Our governance resembles that of a community interest company – which means that any financial surplus NECS generates is returned to our customer owners through the NECS Transformation Fund, so they can re-invest it back into their respective health and care systems. Over the last ten years, we have re-invested £44m.
Our role as a strategic partner
From the beginning, NECS has offered a suite of end-to-end commissioning support services, ranging from human resources, data management and financial accounting to business intelligence, clinical pathway redesign, continuing healthcare and medicines optimisation.
Over the years, as our customers’ needs have evolved, and as our market has expanded, the NECS offer has matured and grown and our products and services fall into three categories: managed services, digital applications and consultancy. Our portfolio of digital products such as RAIDR, the Urgent and Emergency Care App, the Capacity Tracker and OPTICA acute for discharge puts us at the leading edge of NHS digital innovation.
NECS is proud to have been the go-to organisation for NHS England when seeking answers to some of its most significant challenges. In 2018 we were asked to transition the National Cervical Screening Call and Recall Service back into the NHS. In 2021 NECS assumed responsibility for ICT desktop support to all of NHS England, NHSX and Health Education England.
Increasingly, we work as a strategic partner to support the integration of health and care systems, particularly in the North East and Yorkshire.
We have focused our efforts in supporting ICS with the development of their Population Health Management capability, where data is used to design new models of proactive care and deliver improvements in health and wellbeing and make best use of collective resources. We have invested significantly in the modernisation of our renowned commissioning intelligence tool RAIDR to ensure that risk stratification, case funding and patient cohort identification functionality is tailored to meet the needs of the GP, the Primary Care Network, Place and the Integrated Care System as a whole.
As our reputation and confidence has grown, our customer base has expanded and diversified. We are proud to include NHS providers, Local Authorities, other government departments and international customers such as NHS Wales and Primary Health Networks in Australia as customers.
Our vision is to make life changing improvements to patients living in the communities we serve.
We share a goal with our customers which is to deliver the triple aim of improved population health, improved experience of care and at a reduced cost.