Targeting 5% cost improvement in adult community services
Integrated NHS community provider
The service needed to identify a credible route to approximately 5% cost improvement, around £2m, without relying on arbitrary top-down reductions that could undermine capacity or access.
Benson linked demand, activity, workforce, productivity, skill mix and cost. Improvement assumptions were grounded in performance already being achieved by better-performing teams rather than theoretical benchmarks alone.
Planning scenarios test changes in clinical capacity, delegation and skill mix, showing the resulting workforce and cost impact over time.
- A 5% cost target translated into operational assumptions.
- Approximately £2m of opportunity tested through workforce and service scenarios.
- Visibility of capacity and staffing consequences before changes are made.
- A framework for tracking whether expected benefits are actually delivered.
Financial sustainability becomes a service-planning question rather than simply a top-down savings requirement, allowing leaders to understand what operational changes are required to achieve the target safely.
Examples from the work.
