Procurement of IV products

Alot has changed within the world of procurement since the Carter report was published in February 2016 (Carter, 2016).

The Carter report showed large variations in costs for the same products throughout the NHS, with an overall spend of £9 billion on procurement. One third of that spending was on medical consumables, including IV-related products.

The Carter report recommended alignment with NHS Supply Chain and trusts working together within a region to set a benchmark on pricing. Since April 2016 all trusts have been required to publish reports on their top 100 spends, with a view to reducing costs by 10%—and show they are working with a purchasing price index.

The Department of Health (DH) set up a procurement transformation programme (PTP), which set out a future operating model (FOM). This involved setting up 11 ‘category towers’ (six of which will be for medical and surgical consumables) along with local cost improvement programmes (CIPs) (Department of Health and Social Care, 2018).