Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to reduce cost inefficiencies in purchasing medical supplies.

NHS England’s new Operating Model, published on 30 January, sets out in Section 4 how it will support National Health Service bodies to deliver efficiencies by improving commercial arrangements. Further information is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/our-new-operating-model-supporting-you-to-deliver-high-quality-care-for-patients/

These include supporting them to make full use of the products, goods, and services available through the NHS Supply Chain, when best value exists, to procure from frameworks operated by an accredited framework host, to use the NHS Spend Comparison Service to identify savings, the Health Commercial System, also known as Atamis, to undertake commercial activity, and the NHS procurement value and savings methodology to track and report on procurement savings and benefits.