Making change happen in land that time forgot

James Quinn, managing director for Meridian Productivity, talks to Carol Harris of Community Practitioner magazine about the company's work with NHS trusts, and the criticisms and controversy it has generated.

When you're going into an NHS trust, what are you aiming to do?

Our first aim is to identify what opportunity there is; we're the only measure of real activity and costs. Generally, we spend three weeks analysing right down to the daily level - activity and utilisation and, ultimately, value for money.
Primarily, we focus on patient activity - on the kind of level of service given in terms of volume and also, to a certain extent, in terms of quality to the client. We analyse whether the organisation has the right service; and the right service for us is measured in terms of quality, quantity and costs.

From that, we look at whether we can put together a programme to help the organisation give their patients and clients a better service; at how we can improve the patient contact; at how we can improve the local health economy; and at how we can improve the value for money that the organisations are spending.

In August 2007 Meridian Productivity embarked on a sixteen week improvement programme within West Sussex PCT. The focus of the programme was Health Visiting with the overall goal of the programme to improve effective use of existing resources and achieve an increased direct client contact of 65% within the services.

During the programme Meridian worked closely with senior management and professional staff to define the Health Visiting Core and Enhanced Service, and implement a management information control and reporting system. The approach taken was consultative and collaborative and through the weekly review and governance process improvement targets were agreed and key performance indicators and outcomes set.

The outcome of the process has been very positive with a return on investment of 10:1 by the end of the twenty week project term. Health Visitors and management now feel they have a high quality defined service with clear information and management processes.

Please extend my thanks to the team who were always professional in their approach. I am happy to provide further details of our project and to recommend Meridian Productivity to other potential clients.

Now in our 12th Year, Meridian was established by James G Quinn in 1996, and has been extensively involved in the Healthcare industry across the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, Holland, Belgium and Spain.

Meridian assists clients across the Healthcare environment (private and public) in achieving improved operating efficiencies and performance, through the development of bespoke management and behavioural processes . These processes are all designed and implemented to ensure that our client organisation can be assured of returning the best performance on the resources applied.

Over the years, Meridian has developed a high degree of experience in the Healthcare environment, especially in areas of clinical operations.

More about our services and how we can help you.

Although focussed on the Health sector for the last eleven years, the team in Meridian Productivity bring the knowledge of many years of improving productivity and processes for service and industrial enterprises as well as a wealth of experience in other aspects of commerce and culture. All of this experience helps to shape our company and the way that we deliver projects for clients. This understanding is used to develop our people and to bring innovative approaches to our client projects.

The management team consist of the Managing Director, the Business Manager, the Chief Analyst, the Operations Director and the HR Director.

Management Team Biographies

During the analysis (the outline study phase) our team works under the direction of the Chief Analyst gathering and analysing data and information to assess the feasibility of achieving realisable improvements for the client. Once the analysis is complete and we have quantified the size, scope and benefits of the project, it is formally handed over to the project team, the many of whom will have worked on the analysis.

Our operations department consists of project teams of project managers assisted by project consultants. The number varies according to the size of the project and the agreed timescales, as we work with the client personnel to achieve best value in their operation.

The project teams rotate after each project allowing cross fertilisation of experience and approach. Our Operations Director oversees the projects on a day to day basis and is a frequent participant in client meetings, providing support to both the client and the project. In addition we have other internal quality control processes including internal auditing.

More about Quality Control

If you would like to find out about careers with Meridian Productivity, please visit our vacancies page.

Career Opportunities with Meridian Productivity.

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