By Steve Marriott on May 20, 2019
Spirit Health has acquired majority shareholding of JD Healthcare Consulting (JDHC), an independent healthcare consultancy, expanding the Spirit offer to include NHS programme redesign and commissioning support.
The new division, Spirit Implement, follows the establishment of Spirit’s market access consultancy service in July 2017 and will provide a platform to aid pharmaceutical organisations and CCGs achieve active implementation projects around medicines optimisation.
As part of the Spirit Health, Spirit Implement will combine JDHC’s knowledge of service design and commissioning support for the NHS, and market access and insight for the pharmaceutical and medical device industries, with Spirit’s resources and expertise in delivering healthcare services to the NHS. Spirit Implement will help pharmaceutical companies and CCGs achieve cost savings and improved patient outcomes through collaborative change management.
Duncan Richardson, Managing Director, JD Healthcare Consulting, who becomes Spirit Implement’s Managing Director, comments: “Having many years’ experience of working with Spirit, our companies share a strong synergy and a clear vision for becoming the best implementation partner for medicines optimisation.
“In addition, the recent addition of Spirit Access has further augmented Spirit’s overall offering to both the NHS and pharma, which means that collectively we can achieve an end-to-end model for identifying, analysing, modelling and delivering much needed cost savings and patient benefit outcomes.”
JDHC has previously worked with Spirit to lead on project management in CCG’s and delivering the company’s active implementation projects through its team of pharmacists and nurses, an approach which is proven to generate almost 700% more annualised cost savings compared to formulary change without active implementation1.
Chris Barker, CEO, Spirit Health, adds: “Sustainable NHS improvement requires both collaboration between CCGs, providers and practices, and a change of mindset that thinks pathway-first rather than product-first. It also requires incremental innovation that responds to real-world needs. With the addition of JDHC to the Spirit family, we are building the facility to provide true best practice in the field of medicines optimisation to add value for the NHS, industry and most importantly patients.”
