Thirty two NHS trusts in north east England have
implemented and begun using a procurement system intended to reduce
costs and increase efficiency.
The trusts within the North East Patches Shared Financial
Systems Project are using the UKprocure eMarketplace to make
purchases from an initial 22 suppliers who have signed up for the
system
UKprocure could not how much the system would cost the NHS, but
said efficiency savings from e-trading would be ploughed back into
front-line NHS services. The system could complete 750,000
purchases a year, they believe.
The consortium members can now trade
electronically with suppliers via the eMarketplace. This will
create efficiency savings, which will be ploughed back into
front-line NHS services, the trusts expect.
Bob Telford, programme director of North East
Patches Shared Systems Project said, "The North East Patches
eMarketplace is transforming the way the NHS and its suppliers do
business with each other. From day one, the eMarketplace will
deliver 32 NHS organisations, with a combined annual non-pay spend
in excess of £500m."
The collaborative approach has already
delivered significant benefits to the member organisations. It has
enabled them to share development costs, pool expertise and work
across organisational boundaries, he said.
In November the Department of Health announced
a joint venture with IT services company Xansa to offer NHS trusts
a centralised financial service that could expand its offering to
e-commerce and payroll.
In 2001, the NHS proposed a single mandatory
national integrated finance and e-commerce system that it predicts
will produce savings of more than £1bn a year, but it never passed
the pilot phase.
For the North East Patches, one link to the
UKprocure eMarketplace enables access to supplier managed
electronic catalogues, and provides a single technology platform
and business process for managing electronic transmission of
purchase orders, order status information and, in the next phase,
electronic invoices.
The eMarketplace integrates seamlessly into
the North East Patches' Oracle 11i Financial systems, to fully
automate the flow of purchasing and management information.