Clinical homecare and coopetition: strengthening safety, innovation and patient experience
Coopetition can sound like jargon, but the idea is straightforward: providers compete to deliver the best possible service, while recognising that some challenges are bigger than any one organisation.
Why the foundations matter more than ever
As the NHS looks to deliver more care closer to home, make better use of digital tools and create more sustainable pathways outside hospital, clinical homecare has an important role to play. But scaling these services safely will require more than individual provider innovation. It will require the sector to move together on the foundations that build confidence: standards, safety, workforce, data and performance.
The role of the NCHA
That is where the National Clinical Homecare Association (NCHA) plays a central role. Through the NCHA, providers work together on shared priorities such as safety, workforce development, performance measurement, digital transformation and sector-wide learning. This collective work is becoming increasingly important as clinical homecare continues to grow in both scale and complexity.
Clinical homecare medicines services support the delivery of ongoing specialist medicines and associated care, initiated by hospital or specialist prescribers and delivered directly to patients.
0 + active patients
supported by the sector by September 2025
0 million medicine deliveries
delivered annually
0 + episodes of clinical care
delivered annually
These are complex pathways, often involving high-cost specialist medicines, clinical training, medicines logistics, in-person and remote care, and close coordination between hospital teams, providers and manufacturers. As more care moves beyond hospital walls, consistency, governance and collaboration become essential.
The patient case for care closer to home
The patient case is equally clear. Polling carried out for the Sciensus Connected Care Report found that:
0 %
would be more likely to stay in work or education if they could manage their condition at home
0 %
cited travel and parking as a major hidden cost of hospital-based care
Nearly half
said expanding specialist home-treatment teams should be a top NHS priority
These findings reflect what many patients and families already know: hospital-based care can carry a significant burden beyond the appointment itself. Travel, parking, time away from work, childcare, fatigue and disruption all add up. Where clinically appropriate, clinical homecare can reduce that burden and help people maintain independence while receiving specialist treatment.
But if clinical homecare is to become more widely available, it needs to be understood not as a service of convenience, but as part of the infrastructure of modern NHS care. That was one of the central messages of the Connected Care Report, which called for clinical homecare to be considered more consistently when shaping future models of care closer to home.
Competition and collaboration, together
The NCHA’s coordinated response during COVID-19 showed the value of working together. More recently, joint work on workforce frameworks, digital solutions and standardised KPIs has helped support quality, transparency and continuous improvement across clinical homecare.
Competition still matters. It drives providers to improve service quality, patient experience and operational performance. But collaboration gives the sector the common foundations it needs to grow safely.
Clinical homecare must be able to innovate, but not at the expense of consistency. It must be able to scale, but not at the expense of safety. It must support individual patient choice and experience, while giving NHS teams, commissioners, regulators and industry partners confidence in the pathway as a whole.
Clinical homecare is already supporting care closer to home at significant scale. The opportunity now is to make these pathways more visible, more consistent and more widely available. That will not happen through competition alone. It will require providers to keep raising the bar individually, while working together on the shared standards, systems and evidence that give patients, clinicians and partners confidence. That is the value of NCHA-led coopetition: helping clinical homecare move from proven pathway to mainstream part of modern NHS delivery.
Explore the future of care closer to home
Download the Connected Care Report or talk to our team about scaling safe, high-quality clinical homecare with the NHS.