NHS Hospitals are wasting up to £500 million a year by paying too much for basic supplies, according to Britain’s spending watchdog.
The National Audit Office found that some health bodies are paying twice as much as others around the country for dressings, clothing and medical equipment.

In some areas, individual hospitals are purchasing 177 different types of surgical glove and putting in hundreds of small orders for A4 paper.

It comes even though the National Health Service is under orders to make £20  billion in efficiency savings over the next four years.

The NAO recommends that the Department of Health make it easier for trusts to compare the prices of products they buy, and that hospitals collaborate with each other to buy in bulk and so save money.

Because local trusts are independent of Whitehall control, the NAO says they should be held to account by Parliament to improve on the “poor value for money” they provide in procurement.

Margaret Hodge, the chairman of the powerful Public Accounts Committee, said: “It is simply unacceptable that so many hospital trusts are currently paying more than they need for basic supplies. Even for some of the commonest items, the price hospitals pay varies by more than 100 per cent.

“Too much purchasing is still done through multiple, low-value orders, which incur high admin costs.

“And the range of similar products that trusts buy is sometimes so wide as to appear ridiculous: how can it be, for instance, that while one trust does its work with just 13 different types of surgical glove, another requires 177?

“These are well-known recipes for poor value for money that really ought to have been addressed by now.”

The NAO report states that England’s 165 NHS hospital trusts spend about £4.6bn a year – a tenth of their total expenditure – on “consumables”, such as surgical dressings, drinks, staff uniforms, pacemakers and replacement hip joints.

Because there is no central system for buying these products, managers in individual hospitals make deals with 17,000 different suppliers. One trust employed 45 people in its procurement team.

Although it is “standard practice” in the private sector, health bodies are not required to give each product they buy an individual code, which would help them analyse data and reduce errors.

As hospitals do not know how much others are paying for products, and they buy items in different quantities at different times, price variation is common and the NAO estimates that up to £150m could be saved if it were eliminated. In some cases the amount paid varied by as much as 183 per cent.

In addition, NHS bodies are putting in on average 4,501 order for surgical gloves a year, and could potentially save £7m a year in admin costs just by reducing orders.

Further savings could be made by buying in bulk or joining regional “hubs” with other hospitals to make economies of scale and improve their bargaining power with suppliers.

Hospitals are also encouraged to standardise the products they use – one trust used 287 different types of tubes known as cannulas, while another bought 15 variations of A4 paper.

Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, said: “At least 10 per cent of hospitals’ spending on consumables, amounting to some £500 million a year, could be saved if trusts got together to buy products in a more collaborative way.

“In the new NHS of constrained budgets, trust chief executives should consider procurement as a strategic priority. Given the scale of the potential savings which the NHS is currently failing to capture, we believe it is important to find effective ways to hold trusts directly to account to Parliament for their procurement practices.”

The Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, said: “We welcome the publication of this report. The more efficient the NHS becomes, the more we can invest back into patient care. That is why it’s so important for hospitals to deal with wasteful procurement.

“While it is up to local hospitals to decide how they purchase products, Government has a role in providing support and robust information. We are therefore considering launching a review to help hospitals get better value for money from procurement, drawing on the expertise of Government advisers.”

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Hospitals-wasting-500m-a-year-on-basic-supplies

Whilst Health Direct applauds the NAO’s research, we know that they are under quoting the waste.

On January 11, 2011 we piublished: NHS wasting £1 billion a year on supplies when we found that the NHS is wasting more than £1 billion of taxpayers’ money a year as managers spend vastly differing amounts on the same supplies, the head of a government backed healthcare efficiency drive has claimed.

The NHS should be allowed to share the benefits of “efficiencies” made by private companies who have won lucrative contracts to build and manage hospitals under the private finance initiative, according to report from the National Audit Office.
The report into the performance of PFI in the health service praises the private sector for making savings but with the NHS being asked to find £20bn in efficiencies it recommends that the government looks to recoup some of the money by renegotiating contracts – a move that would be fiercely resisted by the private sector.

There are more than 70 operational PFI hospitals in England, costing around £900 million a year and with a capital value of more than £6bn.

PFI contracts are awarded and managed by local health trusts with the private company building new hospitals and in some cases providing ancillary services such as catering, cleaning and portering.

Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, says that PFI hospital contracts are generally well-managed and achieving the value for money originally envisaged but calls on the department of health to ensure that “efficiencies are sought and that an appropriate share of benefit comes back to the public sector”.

There is also some concern over the expense associated with PFI contracts. The NAO says that while catering is on average slightly cheaper in PFI hospitals, hospitals with “PFI buildings spend more on maintenance annually to keep the buildings to a specified high standard”.

The idea of taking on the private sector over the costs of PFI has been rising up the political agenda. Last year management consultants McKinsey said that since NHS contracts were written at a time of high interest rates, by simply adjusting them to today’s lower rates the government could save £200m a year in running costs.

Other experts have questioned whether enough risk is being borne by the private sector or if the end users of the buildings are best served by the contracts.

From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jun/17/private-firms-hospital-contracts-nhs

Women should be tested for chlamydia every time they have a new sexual partner to cut their chances of pelvic disease, UK researchers say.

A study of 2,500 students found that annual screening is not enough to prevent cases of pelvic inflammatory disease, which can cause infertility.

In those who were found to have chlamydia, treatment cut the risk of pelvic disease by 80%.

The National Chlamydia Screening Programme backed the findings.

The researchers from St George’s, University of London, concluded that most cases of pelvic inflammatory disease were in women who did not have chlamydia when they were tested a year earlier.

The findings, published in the British Medical Journal, suggested they may have become infected in the 12 months after screening.

Chlamydia is the most common sexually transmitted disease in the UK and the number of cases is steadily rising.

The researchers recruited sexually active female students between the ages of 16 to 27 from 20 universities and colleges in London.

They were swabbed at the beginning of the study and tested for pelvic inflammatory disease, which as well as infertility can cause chronic pain and increase the risk of ectopic pregnancy, a year later.

The researchers found that most cases of pelvic inflammatory disease occurred in women who tested negative for chlamydia when they were initially tested.

Study leader Professor Pippa Oakeshott, who also works as a GP, said: “The crucial message is that individuals should get tested every time they have a new sexual partner.”

But she added that chlamydia was not the only cause of pelvic inflammatory disease.

“It’s probably several bacteria that cause it, and we should probably be screening for other things, but chlamydia and gonorrhoea is a good start.”

She also said testing needed to be more accessible to young people, with kits being given out in colleges and youth clubs.

A spokesman for the Health Protection Agency said the findings reinforced the testing policy of the National Chlamydia Screening Programme, which was launched in 2003.

“The study, looking at a single annual test, shows the importance of the programme’s approach to testing annually or on change of sexual partner because most cases of pelvic inflammatory disease occurred in women who initially tested negative for chlamydia.”

Last year the National Audit Office criticised the screening programme for duplicating effort and failing to test as many of the under-25 target group in England as it should have.

From: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8609354.stm