05.08.13
Radical savings announced through better procurement
The Department of Health has launched a Better Procurement strategy to improve the consistency of procurement and encourage the NHS to bulk-buy equipment to cut costs.
A new procurement champion will be recruited to drive best practice, using private sector expertise to support the NHS in new deals for high-value equipment. A special team, led by health minister Dr Dan Poulter, will also provide guidance to trusts.
Hospitals will be mandated to publish what they pay for goods and services, and a new price index will be created to drive improvements. The temporary staff bill will be cut by 25% through more efficient staffing arrangements.
The NHS will be made more agile and better at working with small and medium-sized businesses, implementing Lord Young’s recommendations on pre-qualification questionnaires, which could be simplified or abolished for low-value procurement.
Dr Poulter said: “The Government is putting an extra £12.7bn into our NHS but that money needs to be spent much more wisely by local hospitals. When our NHS is the single biggest organisation in the UK, hospitals must wake up to the potential to make big savings and radically change the way they buy supplies, goods, services and how they manage their estates.
“We must end the scandalous situation where one hospital spends hundreds of thousands more than another hospital just down the road on something as simple as rubber gloves or syringes, simply because they haven’t got the right systems in place to ensure value for money for local patients. This kind of poor resource management cannot go on, and this radical new strategy will help our NHS get a grip on wasteful spending to drive real change and improved procurement practices so that more of our NHS’s resources can be spent on frontline patient care.
“The money saved though our plans to cut wasteful NHS spending can be spent instead on the things that really matter – such as more operations or revolutionary new treatments.”
Lord Hunt, president of the Health Care Supply Association and chairman of the Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust commented: “Procurement can make a vital contribution to the delivery of better patient care through the negotiation of the best commercial supply arrangements, in conjunction with clinical colleagues and innovative suppliers. As President I want to see the procurement profession develop and am delighted that central to the report are plans to promote leadership and the development of capability and capacity within the NHS procurement function.”
Simon Walsh, chairman of the Health Care Supply Association and Head of Procurement and eCommerce, Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said: “The expectations of the NHS procurement function have never been higher and from my experience there needs to be appropriate investment in the function and also in the systems which support it, in order for procurement to optimise its contribution.
“The leadership of the function at national level in England has been of significant concern since the abolition of the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency in 2010. I welcome the setting up of the Procurement Development Programme Oversight and Delivery Boards and look forward to the Health Care Supply Association (HCSA) making a major contribution in implementing the Procurement Development Programme going forward.”
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