NHS Partnership Models
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Mutual ownership and partnership models in NHS Healthcare: A Comparative Cross Sectional Study
IRAS ID
177873
Contact name
Philip Alexander
Contact email
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 2 months, 14 days
Research summary
A mutual organisation can be defined as being “owned by and run for the benefit of its members, who are actively and directly involved in the business” (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, 2011). Employee-owned models seem to work particularly well in the service industry eg. John Lewis Partnership.
The National Health Service (NHS) is the third large employer in the world and has a complex structure. The optimal model for organisations that deliver healthcare to the end-user – the patient - remains the subject of debate, but in recent years, there has been increasing support for the concept of mutual ownership within healthcare providers. This is not a new idea - mutual healthcare providers are quite common in European countries such as Belgium, France and Germany.
A recent report by the Kings Fund reviewed forty mutual organisations working within the NHS and found that they achieve high levels of staff engagement, which in turn has been linked to better patient care (Kings Fund, 2014). While acknowledging that mutuality is not a panacea, the Kings Fund recommended that NHS organisations should be encouraged to test the mutual organisational model. This report has received considerable coverage in both the lay press and also in high impact medical journals such as the BMJ.
Despite this, there are still concerns about NHS organisations become mutual. Martin McKee, Professor of European Health Policy, argues that mutualisation opens the possibility of privatisation by a large corporation whose main motivation is profit rather than patient care (McKee, 2014).
The aim of this project is to compare staff engagement and patient satisfaction in a mutual organisation and in an NHS foundation trust.
REC name
London - Camberwell St Giles Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/LO/0604
Date of REC Opinion
27 Mar 2015
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion