Letters: What William Blake meant

Procurement profligacy

Sir: In response to Susan Hill’s query ‘Who allows the profligacy in NHS hospital procurement to continue?’ (‘Best medicine’, 16 July), it seems the national scale of public sector bureaucracy is just too great. Given the size and spending power of the NHS, no one should come close to achieving equal efficiencies in economies of scale, nor gain better prices from suppliers. But this is not the case. As a non-clinical procurement professional in the NHS, having come from the private sector, I’ve been surprised to consistently find the national purchasing authority of the NHS (formerly ‘NHS Supply Chain’, now ‘SCCL’) to be the worst pricing option available to us.

Lord Carter’s 2016 report promoted central control of purchase decisions and limitation of options. But in working directly with suppliers to negotiate the best deals for our Trust, we’ve far surpassed anything SCCL could offer. In the case of printing paper, their prices were more than double what we were able to ask for when working independently with suppliers for the best interest of our Trust. The truth is, the NHS on a national scale is a gold mine for suppliers, but the inefficiencies of centralised control eliminate the competitive advantages for Trusts.

Name and address supplied

NHS blank cheques

Sir: I can tell readers – and Susan Hill – all about NHS procurement waste. I worked for an NHS Trust from 2002 to 2006. My job was to purchase ‘aids to daily living’: crutches, walking (zimmer) frames, commodes, electric beds and so on, in all the many varied size permutations. Put simply, I had an open cheque book. My duty was to fill hospital stockroom shelves, from Aylesbury to Marlow, Amersham to Wexham Park. As long as I could obtain the equipment, I could buy it.

Never once in my four years was an invoice queried by the invisible hand of the invoice payers.