Navigating the Complexity of Healthcare

And if we can, let's talk about the NHS and what's going on there and how that fits in with HCML.

Because it sounds like a lot of what you do is, as we've sort of discussed, the bit that's outside the NHS.

But there's just such a big part of health care in this country.

It's hard to have changes there wouldn't impact what you're doing.

completely right.

So we don't provide services.

Well, we've got a really small pain management contract and the rest of the shit.

But actually, in general, we don't work with the NHS for lots of reasons.

It's just incredibly tough, particularly when you're, you know, from the independent sector.

So the NHS's impact, its capability, how it's performing directly affects what we do.

Because if you think about corporates, if you can't get a CGP, you can't have a venue replaced because you need to replace for a year, that impacts the business because that person is off or else, you know, there's a massive shadow that's over us.

And we know that whatever we think about the NHS or thought about it, whatever we think it is or it isn't, it's always going to, well, from now on, it's always going to be a basic service.

And then, therefore, our perceptions of how quickly we get through waiting, how quickly we respond to it, are not going to be what they were 10, 20 years ago, certainly when I started in healthcare in the mid-90s.

It's different.

So therefore, the pressures in the system are different and the consequences of that are greater.

So if you're an employer, you've got to think really carefully and strategically about how you treat your people well, because if you can't, you've got a problem in the profit and loss account because people are absent.

You can't get them back into work because the NHS maybe doesn't provide the services they need.

And this is what Charlie Mayfield was talking about in the Mayfield review.

So how do you incentivise or create a system where corporate employers are doing more to support health and well-being of its employees so that actually we can take more responsibility for that.

Because it is self-serving.

If you get people back onto work, then it's cheaper.

There's a great return on investment for that.

We've done a lot of work over... 20 000 vacancies over the last five years we've been upwards down and it validates it broadly for every pound you spend in those intervention services the return is four pounds in your pnl somebody's got to take that first step and it has to be leadership it has to be the cfo or the ceo or the executive have to go we're going to do this we're going to spend this money and we know that it will return but we've got to we've got to have the faith that it will and there is so much pressure in assisting and to run a business in the UK, it's really difficult to have those conversations with bright, intelligent people.

Their names are known.

But at the moment, we are focused on the next six to 12 months because we've got to get through because of, you know, just general business pressure.