Why procurement is about so much more than just savings

Liaison Financial

The pandemic has brought home how important procurement teams are within the healthcare setting and highlighted the unique contribution they make to the delivery of high-quality patient services.

When looking at procurement, it’s clear that contributions from staff across the entire organisation are necessary to meet the continuous challenge of ensuring the right products and services are available at the right time and at the best value. Delivering these challenges is about so much more than savings, tenders, and orders.

Understanding and valuing the many components of the “supply chain” is an important step in transforming procurement services within an NHS organisation. A simple list of the components demonstrates the range and variety of activities which are so important to support the delivery of quality patient services:

• Demand and supply planning
• Programme management
• Decision support
• Contract management and supplier relationships
• Inventory management
• Logistics
• Clinical effectiveness
• Efficiency
• Analytics
• Benchmarking
• Data management

Over the coming weeks we will be sharing details of new opportunities within these areas that we have identified for improvements and efficiencies. Keep an eye out for our next blog.