Procurement Skills in Healthcare

Procurement skills for healthcare

The global economy has been in gradual recovery since the Covid-19 pandemic, but challenges are growing for the UK public sector. Financial pressures continue to be at the forefront along with a drive for digital transformation, notwithstanding the sustainability agenda and the raft of new procurement regulations. These challenges all require skills that are currently in short supply.

Whilst the Procurement Act 2023 should offer a number of new benefits to suppliers and buyers when managing their procurement and is about cutting of red tape, skills and knowledge within the healthcare sector have been eroded in recent years.

What are the options?

Outsourcing is an option that can make a difference for many organisations both large and small and fully managed solutions can help overcome stretched resources, ensure compliance and adherence to new regulations all whist delivering savings.

Resourcing healthcare is clearly a competitive market and ensuring value for money has never been more urgent. The end-to-end procurement and contract management solution can therefore provide an attractive arrangement and enable greater access to those skills in short supply.

Strong governance and a transparent process is often required in many procurement situations, but working with, and in, partnerships with likeminded bodies can increase confidence with evident successes and
case studies.

Data analysis and insight informed decisions are pivotal to achieving outcomes in sometimes demanding specifications. Monitoring and managing KPI’s can be the first thing that gets overlooked when work pressures of the organisation demand conflicting priorities, but with end-to-end supply these skills can remain available on demand.

Here at Procurement Services we are finding that more and more organisations are enquiring about supplier relationship management expertise as well as how we have been successfully increasing savings and value for money. With access to over 80 framework agreements, there are significant economies to be achieved and maximising value is central to achieving a self-sustaining
delivery model.

So what about Social Value? The understanding of incorporating social value outcomes is a relatively new skill but has become a key requirement in procurement exercises. Again, a fully managed procurement service can provide opportunities to share and enhance the outcomes that can really be achieved with the right focus.

Systems are the final piece of the jigsaw. Gaining a single view of all spend and procurement activity is imperative to reducing contract spend and improving outcomes. Reinventing systems over and over are often an Achilles Heal but with end to end managed services, again there are economies to be built upon, maximising resources and concentrating specialisms for the workforce.

As ever, with so many competing priorities there is never a ‘right time’ to make such large scale change. However as pressure mounts on ever dwindling resources, new ways of working and delivery are becoming an increasingly necessary and attractive option.

For more information about Procurement Services and the Managed Procurement Service solution, please contact Head of Commercial Development

James.Drury@csltd.org.uk or visit www.procurementservices.co.uk