Scotland's IT procurement puts England NHS to shame
NHS north of the border makes huge savings as English trusts refuse to collaborate on solutions
NHS trusts in England are lagging behind their Scottish counterparts and missing the chance to make huge financial savings by failing to procure IT solutions collectively.
In England things are very much siloed. It is about each individual trust and it has been very difficult to get them to sit in the same room. We have tried to do that and it has proved very hard
In an interview with BBH this week, Steve Lethbridge and Nick Miles, part of the sales team at single sign-on technology supplier, Imprivata, said the decision by Scottish trusts to centrally procure the solution had made the process easier and, more importantly, allowed for considerable savings.
The two approaches differ hugely as, following the death of the NHS National Programme for IT in England, trusts are now free to procure solutions on a local basis and have, on the whole, chosen to do their own thing. In stark contrast, north of the border, the health boards decided early on that they wanted to procure one single solution, then deploy it on a localised basis.
Speaking about the difference in the approach to buying single sign-on technology, Lethbridge, the company’s EMEA regional director, said: “In Scotland we had a number of customers, all of which wanted the same solution and whose strategy was closely aligned. Each of these lobbied for a centralised procurement process and NHS Scotland used an existing framework to provide this.
“This approach meant they could deploy the solution the way they wanted to locally, like they do in England, but they got the economies of scale that a national procurement provides.
Everyone, wherever they are located, is trying to save money and there are significant cost savings to be had in collective procurement
“The quandary in England is its numerous procurements, which are fragmented, with some big contracts and some small. In my experience, if you were to look at a trust in one city, I would be very surprised if they were talking to a trust in a neighbouring city about the work they are putting out to tender. This can lead to a duplication of effort in England, which Scotland has been able to avoid.
“Everyone, wherever they are located, is trying to save money and there are significant cost savings to be had in collective procurement.”
Reluctance among trusts in England to join forces can mean they often fail to share best practice, which, Lethbridge says, can help to improve procurement processes and cut costs in the long-run.
“If someone was looking at best practice then trust A would look at how trust B was doing something, then they could share the outcomes, but these lessons could be better shared by trusts in England in order to drive down costs.”
Imprivata’s EMEA technical service manager, Miles, added: “In Scotland all boards were talking to each other and we could get them in a room together to find out exactly what they needed. We then shared best practice from the first deployment through to the last and that worked really well.
“In England things are very much siloed. It is about each individual trust and it has been very difficult to get them to sit in the same room. We have tried to do that and it has proved very hard.
“We can tell managers at one hospital the best way of doing something, but it is much better if they hear about it from another trust. That, in England, has been traditionally hard to achieve.”
In terms of the type of procurement most commonly used, Imprivata say that as solutions get more complex, and their value increases, trusts are opting for more open tenders, a move which does help to increase competition and therefore drive costs down.
