Best Practice in NHS Procurement: Measures That Matter

With Lord Carter’s review acting as catalyst, the importance of metrics and measures has gained traction within NHS Procurement, in order to expose relative performance across Trusts through national league tables.

Indeed, the value of continuous investment in the Procurement function is becoming increasingly apparent, alongside the implementation of consistent metrics and ‘measures that matter’ across hospitals. Such consistency is critical to help deliver NHS-wide productivity and efficiency.

And it was what we observed, first hand, in a number of US hospital chains in the autumn of 2014 that provided the groundwork for these new metrics. There, Chief Procurement Officers and Supply Chain Directors were accountable for delivering against a dedicated ‘strategic metric’. The metric was a driver of many key outcomes including, we noted, significant continuous investment in the Procurement and Supply Chain Management function. The metric was consistent across many US hospitals, and Executive Boards had adopted it to promote overall productivity and efficiency.