By Alex Kafetz, Managing Director
Over the summer we’ve been working on articulating better what ZPB does. This was partly prompted by feedback from the people we work with, who wanted to understand how all our constituent parts, from convening and growing networks, to business strategy, to data analysis and market reports, fitted together.
So we’ve been working with the team, our clients and our new Chairman Janine Hawkins and we now think we’ve coined it:
“ZPB exists to advise, steer and position organisations through the health and care system.”
I’ve been testing this out with a number of people and thinking how I’d elaborate on this. It reminded me of a time from a few years ago, where we worked with a client to publish a new way of measuring emergency admissions to hospital for conditions where it would have been better if the person was treated in primary care.
We’d arranged for a slot on The Today Programme for the client to speak about the project – and the journalist Sarah Montague – asked what action should be taken. “What I’m calling for,” said our client “is better integrated care.” Montague raised an eyebrow at the term integrated care calling him out for using jargon and asked for some explanation. She allowed a response for 45 seconds or so, with one eye on the clock which was counting down to the news. At the allotted time, about 25 seconds from the top of the hour, she interrupted, thanked him from coming on and said “so what we are hearing today is that people in the NHS need to talk to each other a lot more.” And then seamlessly handed over to the headlines.
And that’s what we do at ZPB. We use content, great design, data and evidence to help people and organisations talk to each other more. This includes private organisations, charities and the NHS itself, all with the aim of closer collaboration, better business and partnerships, and ultimately a better experience for all of us who use health and care services.
There’s numerous examples of how we do this but some at the moment include:
• Convening the Digital Healthcare Council chaired by Samantha Jones to help tech providers deliver digital primary care
• Working with Allocate Software to explain the benefits of high quality e-rostering of staff
• Forming an urgent and emergency care network with the Healthy London Partnerships
• Supporting Healthcare at Home, Mike Bell, Dr Nav Chana and others to re-imagine a primary care system which looks beyond healthcare and can support more people in a period of fewer GPs
• And continuing to deliver an excellent programme for the Cambridge Health Network
So it’s a simple as that. ZPB helps organisations have the content, data and evidence to have better conversations. You can see our new descriptions on our website and if you’d like to have a conversation about how we can work with your organisation do email me via alex@zpb-associates.com