Merseyside and Cheshire Clinical Waste Consortium
The Challenge
A number of our Members within the North West region were participants in a previously negotiated agreement for clinical waste which was expiring in March 2013. As an active Member of HealthTrust Europe, Warrington and Halton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust played an integral part in encouraging interest across the region for participation in a collaborative exercise to renew the current arrangement.
Brian Burge who represented the Trust confirmed the need to do this by saying
“The previous Clinical Waste Framework had expired and HTE agreed to facilitate access to their Framework Agreement for both member and non-member Trusts in the Cheshire and Merseyside area via a mini-competition. Warrington & Halton were happy to organise and host some of the meetings”.
The Process/Approach
Following an initial presentation to a collective group of Facilities and Procurement colleagues in late November 2012, a programme and timetable of activities was proposed and 13 neighbouring Trusts were divided into 2 specific Lots which were designated as Acute and Community sites, a decision which was based upon the forecasted market response to the procurement process.
Due to the Framework currently in place within the contract portfolio of HealthTrust Europe, timescales for the programme were significantly reduced and a Mini-Competition process was adopted by Harpreet Rupal, the lead responsible for this category.
Harpreet explained the benefits of this methodology by confirming
“The overall Framework acts a facility to complete a bespoke process which is compliant with EU Legislation but removing the timescales of a full exercise. Defined lists of providers who have been accepted onto the Framework were automatically included in the Mini-Competition, also saving them time and effort by adopting this process”.
Results
Input from each of the Trusts was paramount to the development of the specification and other subsidiary documents for the tender process. Both Andy Johnson from The Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust and John Foley representing Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust and Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust were integral to the continuity of the programme timetable and their extensive knowledge of this category proved invaluable throughout the period of award. In recognition of the number of participants and as an aid for effective communication, a bespoke page and ‘log in’ was established on the Salesforce platform managed by HealthTrust Europe to improve communication. Tracking of all developments within the programme were live and visible for multiple contribution which was acknowledged by John who confirmed the necessity of customer input as being integral to the programme “Some stakeholders could not attend and we wanted to ensure those not present could see latest versions of tender documents, plus the changing waste and procurement landscape had driven changes that needed to be encompassed”. Invariably whilst ensuring compliance with the legislation surrounding the award of this category, the collaborative membership was cognisant in these times of financial challenge within the NHS of cost improvement. In recognition of this a challenging savings target of 15% was established for the overall amalgamated expenditure, this was surpassed when the final contract award was made to SRCL with an average saving across all members being reported as a 31% reduction on current spend.
Member Testimonial
Andy Johnson representing The Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust summarised the overall benefit of participating in the process as
“Considering the varied service requirements of the Acute and PCT Trusts I found, with the help of HealthTrust Europe, the consortium’s collective collaboration was essential and also commendable that the tendering process was completed within the tight time frame. It was ideal that each Trust could benefit from the competitive waste market to make savings and an excellent opportunity for us to investigate the additional services being offered and source a company who could process our waste with the minimum environmental impact”.
For more information, contact our Customer Care Team on 0845 887 5000 or email customercare@htepg.com
