Success at the 2024 HSJ Awards | News

The West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts (WYAAT) and Hempsons LLP have been awarded ‘Best Legal Services Partnership with the NHS’ at the 2024 Health Service Journal (HSJ) Partnership Awards. The prestigious award celebrates work undertaken to secure a pan-pathology managed service contract across three acute hospitals - Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust, and Calderdale & Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust.

The HSJ Partnership Awards provide a platform to shape the future of innovative, integrated health and care systems by showcasing effective collaborations with the NHS.

The ‘Best Legal Services Partnership with the NHS’ award specifically shines light on NHS projects that have utilised legal services to get results, whilst delivering value for money. By working together to procure a single supplier for pathology services across the three trusts, WYAAT and Hempsons LLP were able to deliver £30 million of anticipated savings as a result of combining previous, separate contracts into one. 

Pathology is just one of 12 priority programmes within WYAAT: a collaboration involving six acute trusts across West Yorkshire and Harrogate. By working together on various clinical and corporate priorities, WYAAT aims to tackle unwarranted variation and inequalities in access, outcomes, and experience, driving forward change to support patients.

Mike Philpott, General Manager of Pathology at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “The pan-pathology managed service contract is a key enabler for the delivery of faster diagnoses for our patients, and more resilient services across our three trusts. More integrated automation will support our staff as sample testing workflows become much simpler and less manual on this state-of-the-art equipment”.

Emma Godfrey, Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust’s Deputy Director of Operations for Pathology and Women’s Services added: “I feel proud to have been part of this project. Our partnership has delivered value for money, whilst avoiding duplication and unnecessary delays. It’s unheard of to be able to award these contracts at the first pass but that’s what we’ve achieved and as a result, our patients will be able to access better services, sooner.”

Ben Roberts, WYAAT Finance Lead, said: “This is a wonderful achievement, and I am so proud of WYAAT, the trusts and Hempsons for achieving a financial saving of this scale. This project will change procurement processes within the NHS going forward.”

Andrew Daly, Partner, and Head of Procurement at Hempsons, said: “I was thrilled when my contact from the three trusts approached me to suggest that we submit an entry for this award. This project has demonstrated how legal services and NHS teams can work in close partnership to achieve positive outcomes. It was a real team effort.”