The Government’s inaugural MedTech Strategy published in February last year recognised that lowest price does not always translate to best value and the value of MedTech products should not be seen in isolation but across the whole patient pathway.
The Commercial Strategic Framework published in October by the NHS England Central Commercial Function identifies ensuring a strategic focus on value, innovation and total cost in patient pathways as a strategic priority.
In the absence of guidance on what we mean by value-based procurement and how it should be applied, we see huge variation in the application of value-based procurement and therefore lost opportunity to select the most cost effective MedTech.
The proposed methodology is based on building on the existing approach to Social Value, in which a bank of standard questions is available via ATAMIS e-tender system to select based on relevance. Alongside Social Value, we have proposed four additional domains: Pathway, Resources, Patient, and Product Performance, with a collective minimum weighting of 60% and a standardised score system for procurement exercises.
One of the challenges with value-based procurement is the validation of product claims for existing products and innovation. To address we are exploring options to establish a passport system in which suppliers and their products can be assessed once against the bank of standard questions, and the scores can then be applied into procurement exercises.
A large proportion of MedTech is selected from national framework agreements. To embed value-based procurement into the use of framework agreements we have proposed that for future framework agreements, products are listed in rank order by value score to give visibility to NHS Trusts over the outcome benefits of different products available through national frameworks.
The proposed design principles have been developed following a set of workshops late last year with colleagues from NHS Trusts, NHS Supply Chain, Industry and Patient Groups. We now need your help and input to progress our thinking further with the aim that we get to an agreed approach which is practical to implement and will make a genuine improvement to how value-based procurement is applied. With thanks to HCSA, we aim to hold workshops as part of the calendar of regional events. If you would like to get involved to support this work please reach out to the team at valueassessment@dhsc.gov.uk
Date: 1 May