Hinchingbrooke Hospital

Wookster

Heard the CEO of Circle (the private company which runs the hospital) talk on Today this morning.

He claimed that £1.6M had been saved simply by the way in which the hospital buys paper. If this is true then it is absolutely shocking and indicates the waste that could be cut out.

He also pointed out that the cleaners were cleaning non patient (offices / admin spaces & residences) areas more frequently than patent areas, another shocking point if true. Unions have criticised the cut in cleaning staff (!)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19073700

The NHS does need a does of small company private sector efficiency. Not the G4S kind, but the small, lean private sector kind.

antrobus

Wookster wrote: »

....He claimed that £1.6M had been saved simply by the way in which the hospital buys paper. If this is true then it is absolutely shocking and indicates the waste that could be cut out......

I can believe that.

I did some work for an NHS trust yonks ago putting in a purchasing system. Yea gods, the amount of money that you can save just by doing things properly.

macaque_2

Wookster wrote: »

Heard the CEO of Circle (the private company which runs the hospital) talk on Today this morning.

He claimed that £1.6M had been saved simply by the way in which the hospital buys paper. If this is true then it is absolutely shocking and indicates the waste that could be cut out.

He also pointed out that the cleaners were cleaning non patient (offices / admin spaces & residences) areas more frequently than patent areas, another shocking point if true. Unions have criticised the cut in cleaning staff (!)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19073700

The NHS does need a does of small company private sector efficiency. Not the G4S kind, but the small, lean private sector kind.

This is a case study into how not to use tax payers money

1. Allow self serving overpaid adminstrators to build empires for themselves.
2. Set up a PFI scheme so that private companies can rip off the hospital for 20 years
3. When the administrators and PFI companies have stripped the cupboard bare, send in a private company to make a killing from managing the hospital

It would be funny if is was not so serious.

Graham_Devon

Theres certainly money to be saved by procuring on a lower level, i.e. searching out the deals, but the reason for not doing so (usually), is it also takes several people to manage this, and also increases accounting man hours etc.

To save 1.6m suggests either they are using an immense amount of paper (for comparisons, my local council uses 400,000 reams a year, costhing them £480,000)..... or you need to be overspending massively. £1.6m would buy the hospital 1.3 million reams of paper. To save that....well, somethings not right.

I can't see a hospital using that much paper personally, especially now so many things are electronic.

There could be HUGE savings to be made in form procurement though. So for instance, if they have switched from perforated, non standard paper to standard, you could easily start achieving those sorts of savings. Would have knock on effects to systems though.

Of course, if they were one of the trusts paying £9 a ream of paper, then the saving is easy.

CLAPTON

early days

unaudited results

lets celebrate if it's true and can be repeated elsewhere but lets wait and see.

lostinrates

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Theres certainly money to be saved by procuring on a lower level, i.e. searching out the deals, but the reason for not doing so (usually), is it also takes several people to manage this, and also increases accounting man hours etc.

To save 1.6m suggests either they are using an immense amount of paper (for comparisons, my local council uses 400,000 reams a year, costhing them £480,000)..... or you need to be overspending massively. £1.6m would buy the hospital 1.3 million reams of paper. To save that....well, somethings not right.

I can't see a hospital using that much paper personally, especially now so many things are electronic.

There could be HUGE savings to be made in form procurement though. So for instance, if they have switched from perforated, non standard paper to standard, you could easily start achieving those sorts of savings. Would have knock on effects to systems though.

Of course, if they were one of the trusts paying £9 a ream of paper, then the saving is easy.

I found out very recently that referalls being made between depts in the same building of the same hospital wete done via paper fax. They lost two for me this way
. ( a third was lost between pivate and nhs same method i think but am not certain). This means they have all been sent more than once.

Loughton_Monkey

I agree all this (if true) is shocking. But I earned my pile in 'operations' and operational efficiency, so I know a bit about it, plus I have, of late, been on the receiving end of the NHS in a lot significant ways.

But all this belies the true scandal. The true waste comes from the complete lack of any focus, or 'management' in what is UK's largest employer. Budgets have been increased massively, and 'wasted' on more management layers and salaries - rather than treatment.

NHS '!!!!-ups' are almost a daily occurrence, all of which end up with a miserable apology and statement along the lines of "we have learned from this.... changed procedures to stop this happening again....". In plain English, this means they have added even more paper-work, bureacracy, checklists, and mindless procedures on hard-pressed nurses who don't understand what's going on and can only do the paperwork and allow the students, auxilliaries, and agency nurses to do the 'caring'.

In short, this bad management and over-staffing (in bureaucracy) is costing untold £billions. And now they are told to save some of it, we come back to the "sack a few bin men" syndrome that Local Authorities use. Except in the NHS, they tend to get rid of front-end staff.

When I look at the appalling treatment I have received, I find the indignity and inconvenience extremely frustrating. But salt is rubbed into the wound when I see how remarkably expensive and time consuming it was to provide that bad service to me. [E.g., when as a day patient, a doctor has scanned me and told me everything is done, and that I can go home, at 11:40 a.m., it is frustrating to note hours of absense by nurses trying to find any consultant who will sign a bit of paper, and to have three other staff mindlessly going through all the admission procedures for me, despite my protestations that I don't need admitting, I never did need admitting, I am a day patient..... only finally being 'released' at 6 p.m.!!!!]

RUN_RABBIT_RUN

loughton monkey, you are so right

worked for the nhs a few years ago, joined from private sector

never again - the office staff are like public sector on valium, and the clinical staff work very hard but are up against it because of the ridiculous number of processes and hoops they have to jump through.

the service on paper is a fantastic idea, but they are using private companies in the wrong way and just throwing money at the rest of it expecting that that will somehow fix the swathes of incompetent numpties that get employed because of the ingrained culture.

i saw money being spent right left and centre when i was there which would have resulted in heads rolling if it'd been a business!!! people spending all of their budget money on tut because 'if they didn't, they'd get less next year'. madness!!!

Generali

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Of course, if they were one of the trusts paying £9 a ream of paper, then the saving is easy.

There are plenty of companies out there offering 'incentive schemes' to the person ordering stationery: one offered Nectar points, another holiday vouchers and so on. Of course if you go for the company that just sells you paper then it's a lot cheaper for the company but the procurement manager doesn't get the kickback.

When I was working in the City a cab company that provided nice minicabs to take home late working staff was taken over by an American firm. They were shocked to discover that they were winning business by giving holidays and cash to the procurement people in the banks. Lots of bank staff lost their jobs over that and at least one was threatened with prosecution.

I find it hard to believe that procurement in the NHS is any more scrupulous than procurement in banks.

kabayiri

Wookster wrote: »

...
He claimed that £1.6M had been saved simply by the way in which the hospital buys paper. If this is true then it is absolutely shocking and indicates the waste that could be cut out.
...
The NHS does need a does of small company private sector efficiency. Not the G4S kind, but the small, lean private sector kind.

As positive as this story is I think we need to approach the issue with caution and balance.

There are usually 'easy wins' when you take on a new project. The CEO is no doubt canny, and keen to broadcast these easy wins.

My concern is the scale and level of change pushed on the NHS from on high. It is indeed a political football. You could so easily fix one set of problems, and introduce another set.

It's the people on the ground who generally know what's going on. They just don't always have the motivation or power to do something about it.

kabayiri

Generali wrote: »

...
I find it hard to believe that procurement in the NHS is any more scrupulous than procurement in banks.

How much of business is straight forward nowadays? Not perhaps to a criminal level, but isn't 'getting one over' profitable on so many levels?

It's been going on for a long time, but arguably is more refined now.

I remember a GP friend explaining how his office computer system was supplied 'free' (mid 90s). He seemed quite positive about it, but over a pint it became clear that a replacement hard drive for one of the PCs was costing him £800. Of course, all hardware and consumables had to be purchased through the supplier as part of the arrangement! The perforated form stationery GD mentions was especially eye watering in cost.

Which GP gets promotion and recognition though? The one who proclaims they have secured a system at low cost, or the one who argues everything has a fair price and you need to spend up front.

Perhaps we need transparency, balance and patience. It will take a long time to change.