Healthcare procurement revolves around buying goods, services, and estate management essential for healthcare establishments to be able to function on a day to day basis as well as protect its future strategy as the needs of the population it serves continually evolves.
In simple terms, a healthcare procurement strategy is a detailed roadmap guiding how an NHS Trust intends to procure these essential items and services.
For healthcare institutions, acquiring the right tools, equipment and services is pivotal to keeping up with increasing healthcare demands while ensuring for excellent patient and staff experiences. A healthcare procurement strategy serves as a systematic mechanism for ensuring the facility acquires what it needs for quality patient care, without compromising on cost-effectiveness.
While a major element of this strategy targets healthcare-specific items, like medical apparatus, treatments, supplies, and their upkeep, it’s also inclusive of healthcare infrastructure management and NHS estate planning.
The importance of healthcare procurement strategy
Crafting a procurement strategy is a game-changer for healthcare institutions. By strategically overseeing procurement, NHS facilities can secure necessary items effectively and promptly.
Integral to a robust strategy is a process that assures quality, optimises resources, identifies departmental requirements, and paves the way for informed decisions. By making procurement streamlined, resources can be reallocated to pressing tasks, resulting in an efficient operational structure that prioritises patient and staff welfare.
Five core challenges in healthcare procurement
- Cost-quality equilibrium
Healthcare procurement often grapples with the tug-of-war between cost-effectiveness and quality. Achieving harmony between these demands careful supplier evaluations, precise identification of crucial medical tools, and adept price negotiations. - Budgetary constraints
Tight budgetary leash often poses challenges in earmarking ample funds for procurement, impeding a healthcare facility’s ability to consistently deliver quality care. - Navigating procurement intricacies
With healthcare being multifaceted, its procurement sphere is no different. This often complicates tasks like potential supplier evaluations, pricing, and ensuring value-for-money transactions. - Decentralised procurement
A unified procurement approach is crucial. Without this, there’s a risk of imbalanced resource allocation, with certain items being over-procured at the expense of other critical needs. - Risk management
From settling for below-par goods to supplier defaults and potential frauds, procurement in healthcare isn’t devoid of risks. Mastering risk management is non-negotiable.
Six benefits of an effective procurement strategy
- Elevated financial health
A well-executed strategy can curtail costs, bolstering the financial backbone of healthcare facilities and facilitating their primary healthcare delivery mission. - Operational streamlining
A careful strategy can declutter procurement, minimising time and resource drain. - Exact ordering
Effective procurement strategies ensure accurate identification and timely procurement of medical essentials, curtailing needless expenses. - Risk minimisation
Proactive procurement diminishes associated risks, enabling healthcare establishments to continually refine their procurement decisions. - Transparency and responsibility
By outlining clear procurement rules and regulations, transparency and accountability are enhanced, fortifying stakeholder trust. - Collaboration and communication
A well-laid-out strategy fortifies communication and supplier partnerships, streamlining roles and enhancing cooperative efforts.
Healthcare procurement strategy: a typical flow
Investment blueprinting
Pinpoint what’s needed, from medical equipment to IT infrastructure.
Budgeting and greenlights
Once identified, these needs undergo a budget scrutiny.
Investment execution
Approved needs to transition into a purchasing phase.
Forecasting
Periodic assessments and predictions concerning procurement are done.
Retrospection and analysis
Post a purchase, an in-depth review will ensure optimal decisions were made and whether any learnings can be made or shared.
While these stages give a broad overview, nuances exist based on a Trust’s unique requirements.
The role of Health Spaces in healthcare procurement
Turning strategy into delivery with our integrated project delivery capabilities, our methodology, designed specifically for NHS processes and governance, removes the weight of navigating multifaceted design challenges, tight deadlines, and complex governance, delivering projects up to 30% faster compared to traditional procurement methods.
Our multi-disciplinary team is made up of healthcare planners and designers, all equipped with the knowledge and tools to make the procurement of healthcare infrastructure and estates a simplified process.
Our proven methodology means projects can be deployed faster, with less disruption, and delivered more sustainably without compromising the quality of design or construction.
Health Spaces are accessible to NHS partners through a number of public sector frameworks. Services including Professional Services, Design, Construction and Modular Construction can be procured using these frameworks, and you can talk to one of our procurement experts to find the best route for you.
Frameworks we are accessible through:
Conclusion
Healthcare procurement, simply put, is an NHS institution’s shopping list to serve its patients. This can be from sourcing the latest equipment to repurposing spaces or designing new hospital builds. Its strategy is the how-to of this process.
Done right, it ensures facilities are equipped to deliver excellent care, balancing quality and costs to ensure for exceptional patient and staff experiences.
This intricate balance involves planning, budget approvals, execution, forecasting, and post-purchase evaluations. And with technology’s growing influence, the future of healthcare procurement promises to be data-driven, efficient, and more patient-centric than ever before.
