2021 Recap: A Year of Resilience, Product Growth & Evolving Culture

By Holly Johnson, Marketing Executive

With January already over, we are officially in full swing into 2022. There is so much to look forward to in the sense of where the Compucare system is heading and how the company will evolve.

Streets Heaver showcasing Compucare at LaingBuisson event in 2021

But whilst the future looks exciting, it’s important to reflect on what the past 12 months have brought us. After another year shrouded in pandemic uncertainty, it’s reassuring that Streets Heaver has continued to show resilience and growth across the board.  

In 2021, we proudly celebrated our 35th year in business! Starting out with just 5 employees in a single room, it’s fair to say we’ve grown in numbers quite significantly. Today, Streets Heaver has 70 talented members of staff, all of which are invested in delivering innovative healthcare software to organisations across the UK.  

Restrictions across the UK eased up earlier in the year. This brought the company greater flexibility in the ‘work from home’ requirements. As our offices slowly began to fill back up, we enjoyed a new hybrid version of the WFH life! Since then, we’ve worked hard to develop a careful balance between collaborative office days and working at home when needed.

2021, A RECORD YEAR IN GROWTH 

We continued to strive to improve Compucare by listening to our client’s current and future needs, delivering our first virtual Compucare User Group Workshop since covid put a halt to the usual physical events we’d run.  

Client feedback and communication is central to our software developmental process, and throughout 2021, we have seen several existing clients strengthen their solution with new modules and features thanks to this ongoing communication. `  

In July, existing client Spencer Private Hospitals went live with the Compucare 8 Microsoft Teams integration, their latest enhancement to the Compucare suite. An integration introduced due to the changing demands of face-to-face consultations. Spencer Private Hospitals opted for the Microsoft Teams enhancement as it integrated directly into the relevant Compucare apps, allowing them to create invites and launch meetings from one central hub. 

Last year we also saw many new clients implement Compucare 8. A significant moment in the year was when the award-winning Kent hospital, Benenden, went live with Compucare 8. A milestone achievement for the team! Replacing the hospital’s previous, outdated PAS system, Compucare 8 has helped bring Benenden into the digital age.  

It wasn’t just the private hospitals joining our ever-growing client list, we also saw Compucare 8 make its way into more NHS PPUs than ever. with now 19 of the top 30 earning NHS Trusts for private patient care utilising our software. This means that Compucare is handling in excess of 65% of the national private patient income for the NHS. This equates to around £385M of private income that is being invested back into the NHS to help fund care for all patients. 

“It is the best software I know of for private patient management” – Romi Appanah, Head of Private Patients at Epsom St Helier’s, The Northey Suite, on their Compucare 8 implementation in 2021.  

 

Catching up with clients has been a real highlight of 2021, especially with all the fantastic implementations, go-lives and new hospitals joining our ever-growing client base.  Whilst these have predominantly online affairs, in October we finally had the opportunity to return to in-person events. The LaingBuisson Private Acute Healthcare Conference was our first in-person event since the pandemic hit! We joined directors, finance executives and senior management from leading hospital operators, insurers, and investors as LaingBuisson brought together its unique research, latest data, and sector forecasts for 2022 and beyond. 

 

MENTAL HEALTH AT WORK 

Taking care of our employees has always been at the forefront of our values. We pride ourselves on having staff who share these same company values. 

The company has maintained a proactive approach to improving mental health at work. At the start of 2021, we reminded staff to enjoy their tea breaks and look after themselves whilst working from home, with wonderful care packages from a local business, Lincoln Tea & Coffee Company. We also saw more newly trained Mental Health First Aiders joining the existing internal team.  

With many measures already in place, we also supported our employees further through the help of the Mental Health Productivity Programme. In 2021, we signed the Mental Health at Work commitment to seek out more ways of supporting staff and their families. From this, many employees joined a pioneering pilot study from Warwick University and MIND to help improve mental health at work across the UK, and the company also enrolled in access to free private therapy sessions.  

 

OVER £3500 RAISED FOR CHARITY 

Another key focus of Streets Heaver is to support our local community. Last year, we fundraised for the Lincoln Community Larder as our chosen charity of the year. Staff hosted virtual quizzes, murder mysteries and fancy-dress days galore to support this valuable cause. 

Amongst the many other fundraising efforts, one of our biggest achievements was a litter picking walk from Woodhall Spa to Lincoln via the popular, 18-mile, Water Rail walk. The walkers were armed with litter grabbers and hoops provided by C.L.E.A.N and completed the full route cleaning up this much-loved walkway, raising over £2330 towards supporting the food banks in the process. 

This brought our total for the year to a staggering £3,537 – double our target! The chosen charity of the year for 2022 has been named as St Barnabas Hospice, supporting them in their 50th year. And you can guarantee that staff will be continuing the momentum as we continue the year.  

 

BUSINESS OF THE YEAR 

We focussed our efforts on dedicating ongoing support to the awards industry in 2021. Streets Heaver sponsored the Hospital Award at the LaingBuisson Awards in November for yet another year, which saw Schoen Clinic Newbridge scoop the title. Earlier in the year, our Commercials Director, Ben Heaver, had the honour of announcing the HTN Awards’ Rapid Response to COVID 19′ Award Winner as Royal Papworth, for their ‘accelerated’ efforts during the pandemic. 

But it wasn’t all about the sponsorships, and Streets Heaver also scooped themselves Highly Commended in Business of the Year at the Lincolnshire Innovation & Technology Awards in December. Our recognition came from striving to deliver industry-leading healthcare software, supporting the local community, and building on our learning-focused company culture.  

We have our fingers crossed for the number one spot this year!  

Business of the year 2021 - highly commended