Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership

Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership

GM Procurement Programme

Briefly describe the initiative/ project/service; please include your aims and objectives

The Greater Manchester region covers 5.7% of NHS England spend. The total non-pay spend across GM is £2.33bn, of which £827m is deemed ‘influenceable’ by Procurement. The cost of procurement & supply chain operation in GM is around £7.6m per annum. Staffing levels in the region are 224 WTE with 240,000+ Purchase Orders being raised.

A regional procurement programme was created by the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership in February 2018. This was to focus on improved collaboration of Trust spend as part of the regions devolution powers. A formal programme board now exists including all GM Trusts, SCCL, NHS Improvement plus local authority representation.

A number of high-level projects were created by the programme board. These include:

  • Tactical efficiencies; To identify and implement real savings from a collaborative approach to procurement from standardised pricing and shared tendering.
  • Common systems, roles and processes:
  • Supplier relationship management
  • Scan 4 Safety
  • Consolidated supply hub and inventory
  • Unified procurement organisation
  • Sustainability Agenda: Ensuring sustainable procurement in NHS. This was new for 19/20 but becoming a priority agenda as outlined further below.

What are the key achievements?

The team have brought together multiple complex stakeholders and implemented the agreed regional plan showing high levels of commitment and success. Communication at all times has been open and clear to not only procurement staff but also finance staff, clinical staff and others impacted including suppliers. Regular updates have been given to Directors of Finance, Chief Executives, Medical Directors and other specialist groups.

Real savings are being delivered and will continue to be. It is estimated over £3m+ this year from regional collaborations will be archived. It is expected that the team will continue into 20/21 to deliver even higher values.

The team is being recognised as an example for other regions to follow and is being help up as an exemplar within the system. The team has been heavily involved In the NHSI work on the Procurement Target Operating Model (PTOM) so hoped the model will be replicated elsewhere. Overall, we feel this team would be a worthy recipient of this years award.

What are the key learning points?

Although this was a NHS focused initiative the model and key learning is replicable across the wider public sector. Although collaboration is talked out repeatedly it often fails to deliver. In this case delivery has been successful thought the following key factors:

Clear governance: Roles and responsibilities need to be agreed early with clear escalation paths for when conflict occurs (and it will occur!). Routes to Directors of Finance and other key stakeholders ensured success.

Dedicated resources: This can’t be part of somebody’s day job. There must be dedicated full time resources to make this work. These resources also reported directly to the board for accountability.

Partnership Working: People must be invested, either financially or via use of own resources. At times larger benefits for single organisations were sacrificed for the greater good of the region.

Shared Responsibility: Each organisation took a lead, supported by central resources, so was shared responsibility for delivery.

Quick Wins: The programme needs to show success early to keep being engaged and to show the value of taking part. This was achieved by some tactical procurements showing benefits of collaboration and aggregation.