The national procurement agency has awarded contracts to manage its non-clinical categories for up to six years to two incumbent external service providers, following an 11-month procurement process.
Compass Group subsidiary Foodbuy will continue to manage the food category, which it has run since 2018, NHS Supply Chain announced yesterday. Meanwhile, NHS consortium the North of England Commercial and Procurement Collaborative will run the “facilities” category, which lumps together office supplies – currently managed by the Crown Commercial Service – with hotel services that NOECPC has managed since 2018.
Their contracts will run for four years from 1 April 2023, including a three-month implementation period, with the option to extend by a further two years.
The two management service providers will bring “renewed focus and energy on supplier performance improvements” as well as “support for strategic objectives including resilience, sustainability, and innovation” to the contracts, NHSSC said.
The agency’s current operating model, which comes to an end in May, divides the goods trusts can buy through NHSSC into 11 “category towers”, all managed by external service providers.
The new operating model the agency is in the process of implementing will condense the 11 towers down to five. The three clinical categories covering products ranging from sutures to MRI machines will be managed internally by NHSSC while the non-clinical categories will continue to be managed by external providers.
The decision to bring clinical category management in-house was a major departure from the previous operating model that was predicated on harnessing the private sector to drive greater efficiency. But now NHSSC says it is “operating in a more challenging economic environment” so it must “simplify how we operate and partners more expertly with our stakeholders”.
Source: NHS Supply Chain
Date: 14 March