Preparing for Commercial Growth in Primary Care
Apr 15
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Preparing for Commercial Growth in Primary Care
In an increasingly complex and financially pressured system, more provider organisations in primary care are exploring ways to bring structure to their services and assess their potential for commercial growth. This isn’t about abandoning the NHS ethos, it’s about recognising that innovation, when well-defined and properly supported, can create value both within and beyond local systems.
In recent work with a large provider organisation, I was asked to help them better understand the services they had developed over time and whether any of them could be taken to a wider market. They had grown their offer in response to system need, but without necessarily shaping it for anyone outside their immediate partners.
Why Commercial Readiness Matters
General practice and its wider networks have developed countless bespoke offers in response to local challenges. Many of these services carry real potential: they solve problems, have strong clinical leadership and often generate positive outcomes. But few are structured in a way that allows them to be packaged, costed, and commissioned outside the environments they were built in.
Commercial readiness is the process of:
Understanding what value your organisation can offer
Structuring it into something that is understandable, repeatable, and fundable
Testing its feasibility against market conditions, competitor landscape and internal capability
Research from the Health Foundation and Nuffield Trust has consistently shown that innovation in primary care often fails to spread because it remains too localised or informal in its delivery. Commercial growth requires moving beyond this.
What I Learned Through Practice
Working with internal teams, I supported a review of service offers to understand what might have potential for development beyond the current system. Some services had real traction delivering measurable benefit and supported by deep expertise. Others were harder to define. Often, what was missing wasn’t quality, but clarity.
We:
Worked to define what each offer actually included
Mapped out operational needs and delivery models
Shaped early descriptions to support future conversations with commissioners or partners
The result was a clear development plan that prioritised offers with genuine potential for growth, but grounded it in the organisation’s current capacity and appetite.
Three Questions Every Provider Should Ask
What are we uniquely positioned to offer? This means looking beyond reactive delivery and identifying where your organisation’s strengths consistently add value.
Could we deliver this at scale, and under different conditions? Commercial growth usually involves stepping outside your usual relationships or funding routes. Would the service still hold up?
Have we defined it clearly enough for someone else to buy it? If a commissioner or partner can’t see the boundaries, cost or impact, it’s not ready for the market.
Where Academic Research Meets Practice
Frameworks like the NHS Innovation Service and published work by organisations such as the King’s Fund support this kind of thinking. They reinforce the importance of structured pathways to scaling and commercialising innovation. Yet there is often a gap between theoretical frameworks and real-world delivery.
Our role is to bridge that gap to bring clarity, structure and external insight into what can often feel like an internal, organic process.
Final Thought
Commercial growth in primary care doesn’t mean selling out, it means building offers that are robust enough to be sustainable, shareable and valuable beyond your immediate geography. Whether you’re starting with a concept or already delivering a service that others admire, understanding your commercial readiness is a necessary step.
If your organisation is looking to explore this space, let’s have a conversation.
