Month: November 2022

We are so very proud to announce #CurzonConsulting, has won the Commercial Impact #mcaawards 2022 award, with #RamsayHeathCare. Representing the very best of our consulting business, it’s such an incredible achievement to be recognised for our Procurement Transformation Programme. The judges said this was a team that: “brought specific expertise to a problem and rebuilt the procurement capability at speed, changing hearts and minds in the organisation.”

Established by the Management Consultancies Association, the representative body for the UK’s leading management consulting firms, the #MCAAwards demonstrate the transformational work the sector has undertaken during the last challenging twelve months.

The remarkable achievement marks the eight consecutive years that Curzon Consulting has been a finalist at these prestigious awards.

Commercial Impact: Procurement Transformation Programme with Ramsay Health Care UK

Ramsay Group operates a global network of 530+ healthcare facilities across 11 countries.

The pandemic exposed an over-reliance on a ‘single’ income source. With all elective activity (e.g., joint replacements, cataracts), the primary income source, halted overnight, but a high fixed cost base remained.

As a response, Ramsay UK embarked on an ambitious growth & efficiency programme. Curzon was engaged to design and deliver a Procurement Transformation programme.

Over 9 months, we took a pragmatic, agile and “together” approach to accelerate benefit delivery, particularly in high spend / high complex clinical spend categories.

By assessing the existing PO against a methodical and objective review against 8 dimensions we highlighted several data-driven insights; fundamentally, the PO only managed 44% of total spend; hence lack of PO involvement resulted in suboptimal category /supplier management and savings delivery.

Improvement opportunities were incorporated into the design of the new Procurement Organisation.

Our methodology was specifically adapted to address demand-side cost optimisation levers.

Through a deep dive into orthopaedics, a key benefit delivered in Orthopaedics came from ensuring the Surgeon selected the appropriate implant system (metal or ceramic) to match the patient’s profile (e.g., age, gender).

A well-established norm in Orthopaedics is to routinely implant, high quality, lower-cost metal vs. ceramic hip systems into >70-year-old patients. Our analysis showed Surgeons at Ramsay UK implanted costly ceramic hip systems in 33% of >70-year-old NHS patients. The NHS reimbursement for a complete hip replacement is fixed, so every incremental switch from ceramic to metal impacted the bottom line.

Surgeons had little comprehension of how their hip selection decisions impacted Ramsay UK’s profitability.  Our insights directly influenced the Orthopaedic Steering Group’s new policy which required Surgeons to utilise lower-cost metal hip systems in older NHS patients.

Curzon established an open, trusted, and collaborative way of working with the Ramsay team, and by adopting a “one team” approach with the PO we ensured everyone involved with the procurement transformation owned the outcome and maximised the benefits from knowledge transfer during Wave 1.

Fundamentally a key part of the relationship was to ensure recommendations on cost improvement would not compromise clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction.

Wave 1 has delivered £multi-millions in incremental annualised savings. In addition, the savings have translated into several £100 million worth of shareholder value.

Commenting on the success – Ramsay Health’s CFO Peter Allen said:

“Curzon helped us obtain the confidence and operational ‘can-do’ to drive incremental savings sooner than we could have expected, and then to push on to best practice performance.

Their skill was in balancing pace of change and the results imperative with the need to take the organisation with them on the journey.  A key achievement was building the necessary collaboration between the many functions that needed to act together to drive benefits in complex clinical spend categories.

Curzon’s strong analytical expertise, and ability help us to take a critical view on the “art of the possible” and bring the team along on the journey to demonstrate benefits delivery was a critical success factor.

The result was a tangible and ongoing commercial win, and a new Procurement Organisation to drive cost leadership, profitability and sustainability going forward”

A massive congratulations to the Curzon Consulting team and Ramsay Health Care UK and the other finalists.