Category: In the News

Medical Locum framework reaches milestone

In the News
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We are pleased to announce that for the first time in a 12 month period, HealthTrust Europe’s Medical Locums framework has surpassed providing ONE MILLION HOURS of doctors in the NHS.

We would like to thank all of our customers who have worked with us to grow and develop the framework; it is through working with the NHS that we have been able to achieve this milestone, increasing leverage in the marketplace and supporting Trusts to achieve higher levels of compliance, fill and value.

We are still experiencing significant growth with a range of new customers scheduled to join the framework over the coming months.  To talk to us about how your organisation can benefit from use of HealthTrust Europe’s agency staffing agreements, please contact either our Customer Care Team on 0845 887 5000 or Gary Snart on 07887 993 252.

Outsourced Outpatient Pharmacy Service Delivers Significant Cost and Efficiency Savings

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HealthTrust Europe (HTE), the UK’s leading group purchasing organisation, was approached by Royal Devon and Exeter (RD&E) NHS Foundation Trust to undertake a bespoke consultancy project for Outpatient Pharmacy Services.

With over 800 beds across its sites, RD&E delivers over 300,000 outpatient attendances and over 115,000 day case or inpatient admissions each year, and was experiencing increasing demand for inpatient and outpatient services. Despite RD&E’s pharmacy staff and executives exploring a number of possible solutions over the years, they had eventually out-grown their space and sought external advice.

“HTE were picked as they had a proven track record and experience of this type of procurement on behalf of acute trusts. We had been introduced to HTE as part of a possible joint procurement with other Trusts. When we were ready to start our procurement we already had some experience of how HTE would run this on our behalf. As procurement is a complex issue and the Trust did not have local experience HTE were able to support and guide the team through the process. They were available to provide the guidance and timescales in order to keep the process on track and deliver a successful outcome for the Trust” Tracey Foss, Chief Pharmacist at RD&E.

Working in partnership with the RD&E project team, HTE set out to deliver and implement an Outpatient Dispensing Service, a project that was expected to take in the region of 12 month to complete. HTE provided a tailored approach to deliver a long term solution for RD&E; including defining the scope of the project and undertaking a competitive dialogue tendering exercise, through to contract award and project implementation.

HTE submitted a comprehensive OJEU notice and a robust pre-qualification questionnaire to ensure that only fit for purpose suppliers were short-listed to the Competitive Dialogue stage of the process.  Relevant documentation was then issued to those suppliers, with two dialogue stages taking place to establish a comprehensive solution that was fit for purpose. The evaluation occurred after each dialogue stage of the process. HTE supported RD&E at every stage right through to implementation, with input from its in-house legal solicitor to ensure legal compliance, and to ensure no legal challenges were raised in respect of the procurement exercise.

The competitive dialogue tendering exercise allowed RD&E to make an informed and confident choice to partner with Boots UK Limited, who provided a state of the art Outpatient Pharmacy located on the ground floor in the main hospital corridor. The dispensary has enhanced the patients’ experience while visiting the hospital; enabling quicker discharge, shorter waiting times and allowing the RD&E pharmacy staff to focus on medication reviews for inpatients.

Following successful completion of this bespoke project, HTE has been commissioned by RD&E to undertake a Renal Managed Service procurement project.

“As a preferred partner for total health economy efficiency, we build long term relationships with our members; supporting them to deliver challenging cost saving and efficiency targets. We see ourselves as an extension of their team and look forward to building on this partnership” commented Sanjeev Narwal, Director of Procurement at HTE.

Maximise your potential savings by getting started today with a cost-comparative analysis. Contact our Customer Care Team for more information on 0845 887 500 or email customercare@htepg.com 

New Framework Announcement

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*Opportunity Notice* – Framework Agreement for the supply of Nursing & Care Services Flexible Workers  

HealthTrust Europe have published an OJEU Advert (Official Journal of the European Union) for a Framework Agreement for the supply of Nursing and Care Temporary Workers. 

Access to the information is via the Bravo e-tendering portal by searching for the PQQ (ref: pqq_30393 Nursing & Care services 2015) within the “Current Opportunities” section – https://healthtrusteurope.bravosolution.co.uk

HealthTrust Europe Announce New IT Solutions Framework

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*Opportunity Notice* – Framework Agreement for the provision of Enterprise Level ICT Solutions for IT Hardware Products, Software, Programs, Applications, Associated Products, Services and Support – 2015.

HealthTrust Europe have now published an OJEU notice (Official Journal of the European Union) and access to the information can be found through the tender website – http://ow.ly/IBGNT

Case Study – OPD Outsourcing

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CASE STUDY

Imperial College Healthcare OPD Outsourcing

Client Overview

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust is a large acute and specialist Trust in London consisting of 5 hospitals: St Marys, Hammersmith, Charing Cross, Western Eye and Queen Charlottes and Chelsea.

The Challenge 

Imperial College Healthcare were seeking an external organisation to provide outpatients dispensing and retail pharmacy services for the Trust which would enable patient experience to be improved and efficiency savings to be realised.  In addition, the Trust saw the opportunity to assist the Pharmacy staff in focusing on specialist inpatient medicines and discharge, and to improve the service quality of outpatients dispensing.

Imperial expressed their interest in implementing a fully outsourced patient dispensing service for the Trust and as a result they asked HealthTrust Europe to run this project for them.

The Process/Approach

Sanjeev Narwal worked with Imperial and facilitated a full OJEU compliant Competitive Dialogue process to ensure that a partnership could be established which delivered an outstanding service for a leading hospital with the most cost effective and competent supplier.

Results

Through a robust tender process, a contract was awarded to provide an outpatient dispensing service and retail pharmacy services across three sites for Imperial implementing four Pharmacy Outpatient Dispensing sites.  This was to begin firstly in March 2013 where HIV dispensing was to be implemented, followed by the whole service in May 2013.  This project realised a saving of £2.3m for the Trust with multiple savings generated during the course of the agreement through the partnership working, as well as significant improvements in the quality of service provision.

For more information, contact our Customer Care Team on 0845 887 5000 or email customercare@htepg.com

NOW AWARDED: Salary Sacrifice and Employee Benefits

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HealthTrust Europe’s new Salary Sacrifice and Employee Benefits framework agreement is now awarded.  Offering your organisation OJEU compliant, free of charge access to a range of Salary Sacrifice options now including IT Equipment and Mobile phones amongst others, this agreement is available to be accessed by any UK public sector organisation.

Further information and the framework brief for the agreement can be found here.

Call our Helpdesk now on 0845 887 5000 to discuss how your organisation can benefit from use of this framework agreement.

 

Case Study – Payroll Services

Case Studies
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CASE STUDY

South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust Payroll Services

The Challenge 

South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust’s (“SWFT”) existing Payroll Service was managed through Electronic Staff Records (“ESR”) as part of the Arden Cluster arrangement on an outsourced model. Due to NHS organisational changes within the cluster the Trust made a business decision to review the provision of their Payroll Service. Mark Higgitt, Head of Procurement at SWFT contacted Gary Snart, Category Specialist at HealthTrust Europe (“HTE”) to ascertain whether the new ESR Compatible Payroll Management Service Framework could be utilised to provide an alternative supplier.

The Process/Approach

Following initial engagement, it was agreed that HTE would assist the Trust’s project lead, Peter Dillon in managing a competitive process on behalf of the Trust and their collaborative partner George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust (“GEH”), who had similar requirements. A Project Group and Evaluation Panel representing both Trust’s and the incumbent service provider was formed with a view to awarding on a consensus basis.

The Project Group initially reviewed the four awarded suppliers on the HTE Framework to ascertain solutions available and to consider award criteria to achieve a successful outcome. An output based specification and a selection process outlining the Trusts requirements, with quality and price criteria for award was agreed and formalised by HTE in the form of an ITT. The Selection Process was then managed remotely by HTE through the Bravo eTendering Portal with relative support from the Project Group where required for bidder clarifications.

Three of the Four Framework Suppliers submitted offers, all of which generated savings, and each bid was evaluated by the Project Group, two of the bidders were subsequently invited to interview to clarify technical responses and finalise scoring. Following sign off of a Recommendation Report prepared by HTE outlining the evaluation process, a consensus award decision was made to award McKesson Information Solutions the Contract. HTE supported the finalisation of Contract Documents which were signed off by both parties before handing over implementation requirements to McKesson with a projected start date of 1st July.

Results

By engaging with HTE and accessing the Framework the Trust created a savings opportunity of £187,017.80 (exc VAT), subject to strategic changes in-house and repatriation of services, the actual saving realised against their Cost Improvement Programme was reduced. Overall, the Trust achieved good value whilst also delivering a fundamental service provision with appropriate market testing.

For more information, contact our Customer Care Team on 0845 887 5000 or email customercare@htepg.com

IT Hardware Servers & Storage framework Lots now awarded

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Lots 4 & 5 of HealthTrust Europe’s IT Hardware framework agreement for Servers and Storage are now live.

Offering best value and OJEU compliance, this agreement covers the full range of your IT Hardware requirements and is available to be accessed immediately and free of charge.

For more information about the framework agreement and to download the framework briefs click here.  Alternatively please contact our Customer Care Team on 0845 887 500 to arrange for access to this agreement.

HealthTrust Europe launch spend dashboards for members

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On 10th January, HealthTrust Europe members viewed a demonstration of the innovative new reports during the latest Heads of Procurement meeting. The launch was extremely positively received with excellent feedback.

The new spend report functionality is located within the Members Area of our website http://hteurope.wpengine.com/members .

This development uses supplier management information to present back tailor-made dashboards to HealthTrust Members. The management information, which is received by HealthTrust monthly for all contracted suppliers, is now being used to populate high level dashboards illustrating top spend suppliers and categories for each member Trust. In addition, HealthTrust are building specific category dashboards and have initially launched these for all four contracted areas of temporary staffing and elective orthopaedics. 

 

Case Study – Clinical Waste

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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