10th November 2025

Social enterprises are ahead of the curve on healthcare, experts reveal

Social enterprises working within the NHS, such as Your Healthcare, are already delivering the Government’s 10 Year Plan, according to health experts. 

New research from the independent health charity, The King’s Fund, and employee-owned health and social care consultancy Baxendale, evidences the contribution social enterprises are already making in health and social care. 

A social enterprise is a business which reinvests its profits into a social or environmental mission. The sixty largest healthcare social enterprises deliver £2.4 billion in services each year and the fifteen largest employ nearly 12,000 people.

The research shows that social enterprises provide urgent ‘out-of-ours’ healthcare for two thirds of the population and deliver one third of community healthcare services. Your Healthcare’s urgent community responders have the second highest volume of referrals for urgent care response across South West London, and achieve the target two-hour response 99% of the time, the highestpercentage in the region.

The research shows that employees are more engaged and sickness rates are lower in social enterprises compared to the NHS average. Your Healthcare’ssickness absence rate is 2.9% compared to the NHS average of 5.7% (Jan 2025). 

The research shows that social enterprises match or outperform community trusts on several issues related to organisational culture and very significantly outperform the NHS as a whole. When asked if they would recommend their organisation as a place to work, the overall NHS average is 42%, while social enterprises and community trusts register 66%. At Your Healthcare, 95% of staff members would recommend the organisation as a ‘great’ place to work.

Overall, the evidence reveals the significant impact of social enterprises in providing better healthcare with happier, healthier workforces delivering more preventative, community-based care that cut waiting times and improve access. 

Adam Lent, senior consultant in the leadership and organisational development team at The King’s Fund, said: “This report doesn’t just reveal that social enterprises are a highly impactful part of the health sector but also explains why that is the case. And the core reason is their relentless focus on impact.  At their best, social enterprises are able to put bureaucracy and hierarchy to one side and just do the right thing for the patients and communities. There are many lessons here for the NHS but the key one must be to give social enterprise the backing and the resource they need to deliver ever greater impact.” 

Your Healthcare managing director, Ed Montgomery, added: “At Your Healthcare we’re proud of our status as a social enterprise, and welcome the freedom it gives us to innovate, be creative and adopt new and better ways of working, to meet the needs of our local community. We believe our model has the potential to be developed, replicated and scaled up nationally and internationally and look forward to the opportunities that are presented in the NHS 10 year plan, especially those around neighbourhood health.”

The full report can be accessed here: https://www.socialenterprise.org.uk/app/uploads/2025/10/Ahead-of-the-curve-on-healthcare.pdf