Our Partnership

Peninsula Heart Clinic (PHC) is an innovative partnership between University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust (UHP) and an independent company called Regent’s Park Healthcare.

RPH is the UK’s leading independent cardiac services company with 20 years of expertise in the development, financing and operation of cardiology and cardiovascular services. RPH employs over 350 staff, and to date has delivered over 150,000 procedures. RPH has been developing innovative service solutions in partnership with NHS hospitals since it was established in 2002. The company owes its name to the London Business School in Regent’s Park where it was first founded in their business incubator unit (called The Lord Gavron Business Centre) in Huntsworth Mews.  The majority business of the  company involves the design, build, financing and operation of cardiology centres to provide additional system capacity to address long NHS waiting lists. Two decades since it was founded, RPH now has an integrated national platform operating interventional and outpatient cardiology services across a large number of NHS hospitals. RPH prides itself on its ability to deliver high-quality, cost-effective cardiac care through excellent service, efficient operations management, well-trained staff and uncompromising professionalism. For more information visit: www.regentsparkhealthcare.com

The partnership between the two organisations is based around a common desire to deliver service innovation by focusing on four key objectives: 1) shorten patient access times; 2) deliver excellent healthcare at reduced cost; 3) improve patient experience; and 4) improve clinical outcomes. UHP currently has long patient waiting times for elective cardiac catheter lab procedures which in some cases exceed 12 months. 

The partnership enables UHP to outsource routine NHS activity to PHC allowing UHP consultant cardiologists to perform cardiac procedures on their own NHS patients. All other clinical and administration staff are provided by RPH, and importantly, PHC adheres to local UHP Trust policies and procedures. PHC is therefore a fully managed healthcare facility by RPH and from an organisational and operational perspective, becomes an extension of the existing cardiology department. From a strategic perspective, the split of elective cases, allows the NHS to focus on emergency and higher risk patients which would otherwise interrupt patient scheduling and lead to routine cases being cancelled.  

The location of PHC alongside the South West Regional Cardiothoracic Centre within Derriford hospital was carefully chosen. This co-location alongside the Trust allows immediate, on-site access to cardiac surgeons, anaesthetists and critical care facilities should they be needed. It also all ensures PHC is able to adhere to all national clinical guidelines for coronary stenting and device implantation, as well as participate in national and local audits with UHP – this ensures safety and drives quality.

To our knowledge, this is the first time anywhere in the NHS that this type of partnership approach has been developed, namely inviting an independent company to co-locate itself alongside a major NHS cardiothoracic centre to provide fully managed cardiology services to improve operational productivity and performance.