20th June 2025

International conference offers platform to share Your Healthcare approach

Ed Montgomery, Your Healthcare’s managing director, was delighted to be invited to speak at the 2025 international Healthcare Ergonomics and Patient Safety (HEPS) conference in Dublin, where he delivered a well-received session: Walking the Human Factors Tightrope: Striking the balance between freedom and control to optimise systems performance and foster employee wellbeing. His paper was co-authored by Dr Richard Plenty and Terri Morrissey of ‘This Is…’.  

The overarching theme of this year’s conference was ‘Safer Better Healthcare By All For All’ and the event brought together a group of speakers representing a diverse community of academics, healthcare professionals, patient partners, regulators, early career researchers and innovators. Human Factors and Ergonomics (HFE) plays a vital role in delivering safe and effective healthcare and HEPS2025 explored the most pressing challenges and emerging trends. 

Your Healthcare is a community interest company that provides health and social care services to residents of Kingston and Richmond in London. Previously part of the NHS, it was spun out as an independent social enterprise in 2010 with UK Government backing. The organisation has been explicitly designed to reduce bureaucracy and improve well-being by giving its members more autonomy, a sense of ownership and an empowering organisation culture .

Ed Montgomery described how Your Healthcare had been set up, how it had developed over the years, the challenges it has faced, and the results that have been achieved. There is now significant evidence to suggest that this approach has been a success. Your Healthcare is stable, trusted by its partners, has a track record of innovation and is financially solvent. Annual employee survey results over the last ten years have shown a consistent upward trend with engagement scores much higher than the NHS average. Vacancy rates, absenteeism and the cost of agency staff are much lower than the NHS average, this would equate to a 5-10% increase in organisational costs.

Ed Montgomery commented: “There was a great deal of interest from delegates in the Your Healthcare approach – especially from international colleagues. We believe our model has the potential to be developed, replicated and scaled up nationally and internationally in community health and social care, and the enthusiasm with which our session was met, suggests there is an appetite to explore this further both at home and abroad.”