Benefits of BVG Membership
What is a Best Value Group (BVG)?
An NPAG BVG is a structured forum for healthcare professionals to meet, discuss current issues and receive presentations on topics that they are interested in. Its prime purpose is to support managers in the continuous improvement of their own services.
What can BVGs offer me?
As national networking groups, NPAG BVGs enable members to share information and experience in an open and honest environment, receive presentations from topical speakers, undertake benchmarking exercises, debate policy, and identify innovation and good working practice.
Crucially in today’s financial climate, membership can help save your Trust money. One recent example was the presentation to the NHS Sustainability Leads Network by energy company EON on demand side response. Trusts can, simply by offering their surplus energy to the grid, generate substantial income and regularly test their back-up generators enhancing their resilience in an emergency.
BVG membership also entitles the member to attend NPAG conferences at a discounted delegate rate. Currently, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, our conferences will be taking place on a virtual platform. We are confident the content and networking opportunities will be met with our usual high standards.
NPAG is a member of the CPD Certification Service. As a BVG member, you will receive an annual CPD certificate at the end of each year to verify attendance at BVG meetings.
One of the greatest benefits to members is access to the NPAGNetwork. This is a fantastic resource providing a managed question and answer service enabling members to unlock the information held by the entire network of NPAG members.
What is the time commitment?
The majority of groups meet four times a year. There is some work, such as benchmarking exercises, that need to be completed between meetings.
Where do the BVGs meet?
We are currently running our BVG meetings on a virtual platform. Microsoft Teams enables us to invite and manage members and guest participation in a secure and safe environment. Speakers can share content and presentations using the share screen facility. Members are encouraged to use the ‘raise hand’ and ‘chat’ facility to interact as you would at a face to face venue. We are hoping to introduce breakout rooms as soon as Microsoft go live with this additional service.
The beauty of virtual meetings is it reduces the cost of travel to and from an event and saves the precious commodity of time away from the office.
Once we can meet face to face again, the venues for BVGs are always chosen for accessibility and suitability – typically they will be in central London or the Midlands.
Moving forward we hope to combine a mix of virtual and face to face to accommodate more member’s needs.
What happens between meetings?
The amount of interaction between meetings is driven by the group members. Often BVGs set up email groups to enable ongoing questions and sharing of information between meetings.
Microsoft Teams have an option to share files, and the chat facility within a meeting stays live for 30 days for members to access information as they wish.
We actively encourage members to share information that we can upload onto the members area of the website.
Benchmarking Code of Conduct
All NPAG national groups undertake Benchmarking and comparison of services in pursuit of continuous improvement. Each group will determine its particular approach and will always respect the principles and requirements for confidentiality, timeliness, legality and use of the information gathered.
Are they value for money?
The average annual cost for a BVG meeting four times a year is £600 per member and any further members at a discounted rate of £295. In comparison a year’s membership is less than the average cost of employing a management consultant for a day.
The membership fee is currently under review for each group. This is to reflect meetings taking place on MS Teams.
New developments
NPAG is continually striving to develop further services for members as part of the annual subscription. Please click here for details of all our current groups.