The team provides a fast, responsive service, acting as an excellent source of information and arranging workshops and masterclasses to help our Trust navigate its way

K Houghton, Royal West Sussex NHS Trust

Competition & Procurement

For some time, Department of Health policy has been moving towards a system management approach. This means that rather than a top-down approach to managing organisations within the NHS, there has been a move to set the framework by which organisations work, and then enable decisions to be made locally about what is the best local service model for patients. A key part of this regulation is covered by the EU Public Procurement Regulations. A further aspect, heralded in the Liberating the NHS White Paper, is the introduction of Competition Law within the NHS.

Procurement regulations

EU Public Procurement Regulations require commissioners to comply with certain requirements when specifying and procuring services as detailed in the Procurement guide for commissioners of NHS-funded services.  This is to deliver the best possible combination of quality for patients and value for taxpayers.

We help commissioners put together procurements and providers to respond to opportunities.

We run network courses for commissioners and providers to understand their responsibilities, and we are happy to repeat these courses locally and work around a “live” example.

We are also happy to provide project management support, strategic advice and quality assurance on tenders and responses to tenders for our members.

For further information, please contact Elliot Howard-Jones on elliot@nhselect.org.uk.


Competition Law

Talk of applying Competition Law in the NHS is relatively new, but greatly accelerated by the vision laid out in Liberating the NHS. Providers need to understand the new requirements to ensure that they do not contravene Competition Law which has very serious implications.

We can help providers understand:

  • Competition law and its goals
  • Competition law and its application in the NHS
  • How complaints can be made
  • How to react
  • Identifying potential competition problems

We run briefing sessions for Executive Teams to ensure that they understand how their strategic decisions interact with the legal framework.

For more information please contact Elliot Howard-Jones at elliot@nhselect.org.uk

 

 
 

Testimonial image

Liz Shutler, Director of Strategic Development & Capital Planning
East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust

"NHS Elect has helped us to gain insight into the challenges facing our procurement team. Their work has improved understanding of how their role needs to change to assist the Trust to realise greater efficiencies and savings and allow us to deliver these benefits in an affordable way".

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