The new government has been ‘rolling the pitch’ for their first Budget later this month, and the NHS Ten Year Plan expected in the spring.

You already know the messaging. No money without reform. Hospitals to communities. Sickness to prevention. None of which is particularly promising when it comes to the financial squeeze on acute hospitals, or restoring 18 week waits in the next four financial years.

But there is promise in the other messages. Analogue to digital. Patients in control of their own data. Productivity was held back by raids on capital.

Investment is coming, then. Not enough to upgrade everything, but enough to join things up, drive out friction, make things slicker. Incremental improvements that are not an event, but rather a journey.

This post is to start that journey. Over the next two posts, we will look at how modest capital investments – when planned in a coherent way – can take out costs, release elective capacity, and free up staff to solve problems and improve patient pathways.

So let’s start talking. Then, when that modest capital starts to feed through, you’ll be ready to put forward your successful bids, and make incremental investments that build into a virtuous cycle of productivity gains. You can start now by getting in touch, and together we can start putting the pieces together.