About Healthcare- Acumen
Services Provided
Deep knowledge of the NHS its structure, function, payment systems and NHS policy.
Award winning & nominated experience in project leading value proposition development.
Extensive track record of successful Market Access skills delivering brand commercial growth through National NHS Policy alignment across: DOH Commercial & Growth, NHS England ICB, Trust and PCNs
Delivering engagement access and implementation and growth.
How Market Access works at Healthcare-Acumen
Integrating with your company
With a continuously successful history in Sales , Marketing, Market Access and HEOR I bring market access brand support across your company functions.
This is a range of unique Market Access non transferable skills proven in generating brand adoption across :
- Specialist & Specialised Care
- Procurement
- NHS Supply Chain
- NHS England brand licencing Assurance
- Off liscence brand threats
- Branded Generics
- ICB wide cardiovascular disease risk reduction
.
Non Transferable Skills
Proven Market Access Skills available to you off the shelf now, developed over 30 years of successful NHS Market Access engagement can generate the meaningful insights into your brands contribution to clinical services where patients access your brand. Enabling engagement with the right NHS Managers inspite of current NHS change showing how the brand value proposition helps deliver of service outcomes they are measured against:
- Relevant NHS Policies
- KOL Advocacy
- Efficiency...................... (Capacity)
- Effectiveness...............(Admissions)
- Economy........................(Costs)
- Patients Access
- Its funding and who can tell whom to make it available to patients
Delivering brand patient access service adoption and sales.
The Market Access Non Transferable Skills Set
Non Transferable Skills
These are skills or knowledge sets that are highly specific to the NHS, or even to a particular ICS, Trust, or national directorate. Engaging with NHS Managers requires an in depth understanding of these skills that by there very nature cannot be trained or developed for in economic timescales
NHS Regulatory Knowledge
e.g., System Oversight Framework, Medicines Value Programme governance
ICS / ICB Operations
Deep understanding of ICB, Systems and Boards
Medicines Policy & Optimisation
Medicines Optimisation Committees, ICB governance routes
Applying NHS‑only regulatory frameworks
VPAG/VPAS, PSR, NHS Commercial standards, NHSE procurement controls
Application of NHS Policy
The Analysis & Insight into how your Brand aligns with NHS Policies That NHS Managers are performance managed to implement e.g. NHS Standard Contract, NHS Outcomes Framework, Medium Term Planning 2026-29, NHS Payment Scheme 26 / 27, NHS Core List
Expertise Available To You Now
NHS Structure & Function
The big NHS changes in 2026 (summary)
- 1. Major structural reform
- NHS England is being reintegrated into DHSC, ending the “arm’s‑length” model and moving toward a single, more centralised health department.
- NHSE regional teams are shifting from performance managers to strategic facilitators, supporting commissioning at scale.
- 2. ICB mergers and new footprints
- From 1 April 2026, 12 ICBs are being merged into 6 new ICBs, with one boundary change.
- This is Phase 1 of a wider reconfiguration to streamline commissioning and reduce duplication.
- 3. Medium‑Term Planning Framework (2026/27–2028/29)
- The NHS has launched its most ambitious plan in years, focused on:
- Cutting waiting times
- Restoring access to local care
- Reducing bureaucracy
- Reinvesting savings into frontline services
- It underpins the wider 10‑Year Health Plan and sets the direction for digital, workforce, and productivity improvements.
- 4. Shift to the Neighbourhood Health Service model
- 2026 accelerates the move from a hospital‑centric system to:
- Neighbourhood Health Centres
- Integrated community diagnostics
- Single Patient Record and AI‑enabled access
- This supports the “left shift” toward prevention and community‑based care.
- 5 Pan‑ICB Commissioning
- New Offices for Pan‑ICB Commissioning (OPICs) are emerging across regions.
- They coordinate services too large for one ICB but not national in scale — a key part of the 2026–27 transition.
NHS Funding
- 1. Treasury → DHSC
- Treasury sets the national health budget.
- DHSC receives the funding and issues financial directions telling NHS England how it must allocate and spend it.
- 2. DHSC → NHS England (NHSE)
- NHSE gets a single annual budget.
- ICB allocations go to local services
- Direct commissioning (specialised services, primary care contracts, screening, vaccinations)
- National programmes (digital, workforce, estates, transformation)
- 3. NHS England → Integrated Care Boards (ICBs)
- ICBs receive a weighted capitation budget based on population need.
- They commission most hospital, community, mental health, and primary care services.
- 4. ICBs → NHS Trusts
- Trusts are paid through:
- Contracts (block, blended, or activity‑based)
- Specialised service contracts (some still held by NHSE)
- 5. NHSE/ICBs → GP Practices
- GP funding comes through:
- Global Sum (capitation)
- QOF (performance)
- Enhanced Services
- PCN funding (workforce, access, DES)
Specialised Commissioning
- NHS England remains the accountable commissioner for all specialised services, but delegation to ICBs has expanded significantly.
- By 2026/27, ICBs have full commissioning responsibility for 70 specialised services, while NHS England continues to directly commission around 104 retained services, including all highly specialised ones (e.g., rare cancers, genetic disorders, complex surgical interventions).
- The system is preparing for a major legislative transfer in April 2027, when most direct commissioning functions — including some specialised services, vaccinations, screening, and health & justice — will formally move to ICBs.
NHS Policy
NHS policy matters to you because the patients who access your brand do so in an NHS service governing, diagnostics, treatment. Service metrics of activity, costs & length of stay.
and thereby capacity and waiting times are also subject to NHS policies overseeing:
- Mortality Risk
- Clinical Risk
- NHS Resources Utilisation
- Standards of Care
- Waiting lists
- Delayed Transfers of care DTOC
Knowing the NHS policies that your Brand affects through patient and service outcomes enables you to articulate your value proposition in a language the NHS is likely to respond too.
NHS Data Sets
There are many data sets that the NHS & Social Care use to manage the patient numbers, activity and costs of the services in which patients access care.
Industry access to these data sets is not universal with restrictions on access and use from a range of 3rd party providers and the NHS its self can be confusing.
- What are the data sets that your Brands affect on patients and services are captured in?
- What are the data queries you need to build to reveal how your brand impacts services and aligns with NHS polices?
- What are the data stories for your brand that can spark dialog with Service Managers, Patient Interest groups and Government?
Value in the NHS
What does value mean to the NHS is it just Cost?
I was once told by a senior NHS commissioner that as a rule of thumb 60% of the cost of a treating a condition are service costs.
We look the factors that are important to delivery of services a including the invaluable benefit of NHS policy implementation
- Efficiency
- Effectiveness
- NHS Policy Implementation
We also look at who that value matters to for the different NHS managers who performance manage those services.
Biography
From my deep and pervasive knowledge of the NHS its structure, function, payment systems and NHS policy objectives I have built skills set to make me a successful & proven Market Access & Partnership Manager / Consultant with a portfolio of brand sales success driven by NHS management engagement and partnership working resulting in NHS England Policy change, regional, ICB, and primary care implementation of NHS policy delivering regional patient uptake and formulary inclusion for my supported brands. In addition, extensive and award winning & nominated experience in project leading value proposition material development including supporting HTA submission. Let me use these skills & experience to drive your company’s business.
Please download my career history and credentials.