Social Value, Sustainability and Quality statement by Mr Gwam Rajiah, Chief Executive Officer of Bespoke Healthcare Ltd, and Mrs Sara Rajiah, Executive Director of Bespoke Healthcare Ltd 

“Proven, not Promised” 

Bespoke Healthcare provides responsive, compassionate and individualised patient care delivered to the highest standards directly to the heart of our community in Lancashire.  With a proven track of excellence, Bespoke Healthcare continues to be wholly owned and operated by a Lancashirebased family with exceptional clinical credentials.

Social values – defined: 

Social value is a principle that champions the holistic well-being of both current and future generations. 

Emphasizing the importance of supporting both individual welfare and planetary sustainability, it traverses three core areas. According to the Shaw Trust ^[1]  these are: 

1. Social: This revolves around enhancing the well-being of individuals and communities, advocating for interconnectedness and mutual support.  
2. Economic: This focuses on the promotion of economic policies and business practices that uplift societal well-being, recognising that economic prosperity should be intertwined with societal progress.  
3. Environmental: This stresses the criticality of sustainable processes which look after both the social and physical environment, ensuring a viable future for all.  

Reference: [1] https://www.shawtrust.org.uk/a-simple-understanding-of-social-value/ 

These three core areas – which are interconnected – are enshrined at the heart of our daily operations. 

Social: 

Since Bespoke Healthcare was founded in 2006 and the subsequent acquisition of Greater Lancashire Hospital in 2014, our organisation has been built on the premise of doing what is right for – and by – our patients as well as our colleagues, partners and communities. This ethos continues to underpin all that we do today. 

Social: 

Our vision is to be a local, leading healthcare provider where clinical excellence, safety, care and quality are at the heart of everything we do, whilst growing and developing our patient-focused business. 

Social & Economic: 

At Bespoke Healthcare, we believe that patients have the right to choose their healthcare provider and we remain committed to offering the highest quality of care and clinical outcomes for all our patients.   

Social & Economic: 

Bespoke Healthcare and Greater Lancashire Hospital work closely with our patients and external stakeholders – including NHS Trusts, independent sector hospitals, General Practitioners (GP)and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) alongside our clinicians – to ensure the best quality healthcare and service is consistently delivered across the UK.  

Social: 

Bespoke Healthcare continues to be proactive and responsive to all of our patients’ specific needs, ensuring safe and effective treatment for our patients at all times. 

Social: 

We are greatly aware that patients can be anxious about coming into hospital. Accordingly, we have always – and will always – place the highest premium on patient safety. We continually review our clinical care standards, clinical effectiveness, outcomes and feedback via audit and observation with a ‘no blame’ culture which helps promote a healthy learning and educational environment. We have a continued commitment to measuring and acting upon patient, customer, and staff feedback. This feedback allows our patients to contact the hospital directly while enabling us to learn constantly while simultaneously enhancing and improving  the quality of all aspects of our service. 

 

Environmental: 

The climate crisis is one of the biggest healthcare challenges we face, and failing to reduce our impact on the planet will have serious implications for both the physical and mental health of our communities. Bespoke Healthcare recognises that if we are to provide the best possible care for our patients, make a positive contribution to the health of our communities and improve their quality of life, we need to significantly reduce our impact on the environment.  

Environmental: 

We are consumers of energy. From heating and lighting our buildings to powering the equipment we use, we buy and use energy daily – some of which will have travelled around the world to get to our hospital. In addition, our supplier delivery vans, patient transport and our staff members travel hundreds of miles every year. All of these contribute to air pollution and climate breakdown which then negatively impacts on the health of our local communities. 

Environmental: 

We are now proactively working with our partners to reduce our environmental footprint and taking decisive action ourselves. These measures include: reducing waste; using electric vehicles; reviewing and re-thinking our supply chain; switching to more sustainable products; and reviewing energy consumption across our estate and facilities. However, we recognise that crucial changes must be made – and are committed to making them. 

Environmental: 

At Bespoke Healthcare, we have a three-year sustainability strategy which sets out how we will identify a framework of interventions needed to drive forward the measures we want to implement. We have identified eight green priority areas for action across all aspects of the healthcare service we provide. These are:  

1. People – workforce, leadership and partnerships 
2. Sustainable healthcare  
3. Energy 
4. Reducing waste 
5. Supply chain and procurement 
6. Climate change – clean air 
7. Travel/ transport– Green Travel Plan 
8. Our estate and facilities 

Bespoke Healthcare: Our three-year Sustainability Strategy 

Question: Why are we doing this?  

Answer: 

Bespoke Healthcare is committed to embedding sustainability across our organisation. This process is supported by our board of directors and the wider team in order to deliver a greener facility and create a healthier environment for patients, staff and the communities we serve. 

Simultaneously, Bespoke Healthcare is committed to delivering outstanding healthcare and providing best value for taxpayers’ money, while ensuring the most effective, fair and sustainable use of resources. 

A healthier planet means healthier people. As an organisation, we are focused on preventing ill health and improving the overall health of the community where we’re headquartered as well as those other parts of the country where we routinely deploy our services. 

In the North West – as in other parts of the country – we recognise that inequalities currently exist when it comes to healthcare. We believe that it is vital we act to improve the health of all of our communities and look beyond the healthcare we provide to the wider, everyday factors which can help keep us all well in the first place. 

Therefore, our plans to be a greener organisation are an integral part of why we are working with our partners to ensure healthier and happier lives for our communities, which can also have a positive impact on the environment too. 

Bespoke Healthcare is proactively working to improve opportunities by buying products and services from businesses based locally in Lancashire. Our founders and directors are also volunteering, supporting and working within our community to help support residents thrive personally and professionally – and potentially need less healthcare 

Our sustainability strategy is dynamic and we will continually escalate our targets and actions, building on lessons learnt in the coming three years.  

The priorities of our organisation evolved as a direct result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Bespoke Healthcare focused on caring for our communities and keeping our staff safe during that unprecedented time. Dealing with the pandemic since March 2020, has demonstrated to us how quickly our staff and partner organisations can react and adapt in response to crisis.  

Bespoke Healthcare recognises that adapting to the escalating climate crisis now requires equal urgency and more enduring change if we are to achieve a ‘net zero’ estate.  

Aligned with the Climate Change Act 2008, the UK has set a mandatory target to reduce carbon emissions to net-zero by 2050. Our organisation will both contribute to and fully support this nationwide transition. 

Improving our carbon footprint and reducing our impact on the environment will bring direct improvements to people and communities. However, the level of change required will need everyone within the organisation to play their part. We are proactively encouraging colleagues to speak out when they can see a more sustainable way of doing things. We recognise that we must work together, sharing our ideas and innovations.  

Our senior managers are now leading their teams by example and  ‘sustainability’ is routinely discussed openly and frankly on their agendas. Environmental performance and achievements are being regularly communicated and promoted to share best practice, which can then be replicated across the organisation.  

We intend to fully embrace our responsibility to lead change, promote green growth, protect our environment and deliver sustainable healthcare by working collaboratively in this way. 

Our Journey so Far

Despite the challenging circumstances all businesses have encountered in the wake of the global pandemic, we continue to prioritise our sustainability journey. 

These positive steps include: 

• Introducing virtual clinics for outpatient appointments which work in partnership with those NHS Trusts we work with. These help reduce the number of patients travelling to both our hospital as well as the NHS Trusts, supporting a further reduction in transport emissions. 
• Greening all our fleet, where possible, by a complete transition to fully electric vehicles (EVs) which are zero-carbon at the point of use. EVs have lower carbon emissions than internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) at the point of use and produce significantly less air pollution including carbon monoxide, nitrogen and particulate matter. This directly supports our decarbonisation plan, while simultaneously contributing to the improvement of local air quality and purity. Reducing air pollution can help to contribute towards improved health outcomes for our patients and communities, thus in the long term potentially reducing hospital admissions. 
• Reducing the amount of paper used across our entire organisation as a direct result of our digital transformation. We have now integrated the use of our electronic patient management system across all divisions of the business, radically cutting the amount of paper used. 

Greater Lancashire Hospital Development Plan  

Bespoke Healthcare will begin developing of a major new hospital – which we are provisionally calling ‘Greater Lancashire Hospital 2’ (GLH2) – adjacent to our existing premises in Ribbleton, Preston, in 2024. 

Our ambitious plans for GLH2 have been devised to create a truly modern, welcoming and efficient healthcare facility.  

• The existing building will be remodelled and extended to create a high quality healthcare facility over three floors.  
• The overall site plan will be remodelled to create: additional green space and planting; cycle parking; EV charging provision; external patient seating and additional patient parking arrangements.  
• Creation of new entrance for patient and staff access. This new entrance will have security barriers and fencing to prevent out of hours access. The existing site access point would be utilised for service vehicles and emergency access.  
• New main patient reception and entrance lobby creating a spacious welcoming area.  
• Minor procedure/ endoscopy theatre.  
• Separate minor procedure sub-wait area.
• Separate first floor clinical suite reception via stair and lift with accessible change/WC areas.  
• Creation of seven new consulting rooms.  
• Physio treatment and  gymnasium area.
• Ultrasound suite.  
• Staff support and admin facilities including seminar room.  
• Dedicated area to the East of the site for mobile diagnostic units.
• Furthermore, the original Greater Lancashire Hospital building (GLH1) will  be redeveloped to include the capability of a general anaesthetic (GA) theatre.   

Greater Lancashire Hospital Development Plans: 

Fulfilling – and surpassing – best sustainability practice requirements

Bespoke Healthcare is committed to ensuring that the new Greater Lancashire Hospital development plans will meet – and ideally exceed – best sustainability practice, whenever possible.

We are working closely with our architects and builders to ensure that the health technical memoranda (HTM) 07-02 – which draws together best practice guidance and background information regarding energy use in the healthcare sector – is embedded at the heart of the development.  

GLH2 will:

• Proactively control, monitor and reduce energy consumption across the facilities. This system is being devised to create the optimum balance between environmental conditions, operating requirements and energy consumption.
• Encompass mechanical ventilation with heat recovery. It will include a building management system (BMS) to monitor energy and water usage.
• Instal occupancy sensors to trim heating costs for those parts of the new facilities that are not in use.
• Implement real time boiler efficiency monitoring and inverters to ensure optimisation.
• Utilise solar panels to be used in as many areas as possible.
• Instal EV charging units.
• Include LED lighting with occupancy sensors.

To conclude… 

As the UK deals with the social, economic and health legacy of the Covid-19 pandemic, communities face a range of additional challenges and pressures. 

For Bespoke Healthcare, the importance of social responsibility and wider consideration on the role that we play in our local community has never been greater. 

We are extremely proud to have supported patients, partners and staff throughout the pandemic and its aftermath.  

Bespoke Healthcare has a strategic aspiration to support and continue to support healthier communities and play a significant role in the provision of accessible progressive care to all patients. 

As people become more aware of social injustices, our patients, colleagues and partners will demand that we fulfil our responsibilities as a local leading healthcare provider and employer. 

Bespoke Healthcare is committed to encouraging equality, diversity, and inclusion among our workforce and eliminating unlawful discrimination. The aim is for our workforce to be truly representative of all sections of society and our patients, and for each employee to feel respected and able to give their best. 

The pandemic and its aftermath have highlighted the excellence of our staff, particularly where our team have felt empowered to make changes beneficial to patients. This willingness to try new approaches to make continued improvements is very much a fundamental part of our organisational culture. 

Bespoke Healthcare recognises that the quality of the company and its ongoing business, however measured, are directly related to the ability and performance of its employees. 

 

We also recognize that if we are to achieve its further success, we need to translate our business strategy into the skill and experience requirements of current and future staff so that our organisation is responsive to the demands and challenges that will now present themselves.  

Bespoke Healthcare recognises that to meet the challenges faced most appropriately, we must continue to encourage, develop and maintain the professional standing of our employees and colleagues by providing further education and training for all. 

During the pandemic, all staff were supported by our ‘Staff and Family Welfare Programme’, providing both mental health and financial support and assistance and this has subsequently remained in place.

Bespoke Healthcare has always – and will always – place a premium on supporting the Preston and Lancashire communities, where our management team and the majority of our colleagues live. 

In recent years, we have provided regular food bank donations, while also taking part in the “Big Sleep Out” in aid of the Foxton Centre. In addition, we have provided sponsorships for young and vulnerable people within the community. In 2023, our team raised money for the ‘Cash for Kids’ charity based in Preston and annually raise funds for MacMillan Cancer Foundation and contribute to the Ronald McDonald Charity, which actively supports Manchester Children’s Hospital.

Bespoke Healthcare is currently supporting the newly established independent charity Preston Youth Zone, which will provide young people with opportunities to engage in activities and access support from skilled youth workers, helping them to develop their skills and reach their full potential. 

We are assisting with the new centre’s build costs and are committed to contributing to the centre’s running costs and fundraising activities in the future. Preston Youth Zone will be part of national youth charity OnSide’s network of 14 ‘Youth Zones’ nationwide, supporting over 50,000 young people, providing opportunities for them to: gain new skills; access help with jobs and training; have a safe place where they can make new friends. 

Bespoke Healthcare has also donated vital neurophysiology equipment to the UK-based charity TeleEEG, which helps to deliver specialist EEG support to developing countries. In December 2022, we also provided funding for their new clinic in Africa. 

Our ethos, quality and clinical strategy, has been and continues to be our highest priority. We continue to ensure that our local communities have accessible care. 

Mr Gwam Rajiah 

Chief Executive  

Bespoke Healthcare Holdings