“What’s the art of the possible here?”
It’s a question Richard Blyth found himself asking soon after joining NL Group as CEO. Having spent more than a decade leading healthcare businesses, he was familiar with the challenges of delivering care at scale. But NL Group presented a different opportunity: a successful, founder-led business with 25 years of experience, strong relationships across its northern heartland and specialist expertise that had largely been concentrated within one geographical area.
For Richard, the question was how much further that expertise could reach. Nine months on, those early observations have helped shape an ambitious five-year growth strategy and a clear vision for NL Group to become the UK’s go-to complex care provider.
Experience brings perspective
Richard describes his career as one of two halves, beginning in financial services before moving into healthcare in 2012. He was Chief Commercial Officer at Allied Healthcare, then Managing Director of Saga Healthcare, overseeing domiciliary care operations across both agency and employed care models. He subsequently spent seven years at Sciensus, leading commercial growth and latterly its digital business.
That breadth of experience has given him an understanding of different healthcare markets, the operational realities of delivering care in people’s homes and the opportunities that come with greater scale.
It’s also reinforced his belief in the importance of specialism.
“It’s very easy to get seduced by lots of different revenue lines,” he explains. “But being focused on complex care, and being experts and specialists in delivering the greatest service in that market, is really important.”
For NL Group, that means building a larger, more capable organisation without diluting its expertise. Richard is strengthening nurse-led leadership throughout the business, ensuring care teams have registered nurse oversight and service users and families have a consistent clinical point of contact.
A market ready for change?
Richard sees considerable potential in a complex care market characterised by numerous smaller providers operating across relatively limited geographies.
“The sector is very fragmented,” he observes. “There are lots of quite small players, and I do think it’s ripe for consolidation.”
He believes greater scale could create opportunities for stronger clinical infrastructure, more efficient delivery and improved outcomes for service users. For NL Group, that means exploring both organic growth and acquisitions, taking its established expertise into new markets.
But he’s realistic about the challenges. Expanding a specialist healthcare business requires more than a compelling strategy, particularly one built on 25 years of founder-led experience and strong relationships.
“There’s huge loyalty among the staff and huge levels of talent,” Richard says. “It’s about working with them carefully and sensibly, at the right pace, to show them what the future could look like and their part in that.”
Technology will also have a role. Drawing on his experience at Sciensus, Richard sees opportunities for AI and digital tools to improve workforce planning, provide additional support around service users and potentially reduce avoidable hospital admissions. But he is clear that technology should support better care, rather than become an end in itself.
From ambition to action
Having spent his first months understanding the business, meeting colleagues and service users and developing an accelerated growth plan, Richard is now focused on implementation.
“This is where the rubber hits the road,” he says.
For all his commercial ambition, he’s particularly animated when discussing the people NL Group supports. Spending time with service users has been a priority throughout his healthcare career, and he believes those experiences are essential to understanding the impact of decisions made within a business.
“I find it humbling. I find it fascinating,” he says. “But most importantly, you see the very real impact of the decisions you’re making on the people receiving our support and care.”
For Richard, the opportunity ahead is to combine the expertise NL Group has developed over 25 years with the clinical leadership, infrastructure and ambition needed to reach more people. The next five years will test how far that ambition can go, while keeping the quality of care firmly in focus.
NL Group | Setting the Standard in Complex Care
