News / Procurement data plea (HFMA 2016)

07 December 2016

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Speaking at a workshop on the first day of the HFMA annual conference, Ian White, NHS Improvement procurement programme lead for implementing the Carter recommendations, said there were huge variations in the quality of information coming from trusts. Oram

The value of spending being fed into the PPIB varied between 0.4% and 7.5% of turnover due to data quality issues. ‘We think the 7.5% is pretty much the full figure for a trust’s spend. But in those trusts at 0.4%, almost none of their everyday purchase order data makes it into the PPIB because the data is so poor. So my challenge to you is how can you make your data better?’

The issue of data quality was underlined by Mat Oram (pictured), director of Advise Inc, which is helping NHS Improvement deliver the PPIB tool. He said cleansing data meant, for example removing spending where the manufacturer product code was absent. This spending was often legitimate – it could include private finance initiative payments, for example – but should not be included in the tool. However, the value of spending going into the tool was significantly less than in the raw data.

Mr White said that in the new year a procurement dashboard would be made available via the model hospital portal. This would include a wealth of information, such as annual and quarterly non-pay spend per weighted activity unit (WAU).

The dashboard will be tailored to each trust’s non-pay spend – for example, including details of a trust’s top 100 items. It will allow a trust to compare the price of these items with those paid by other trusts.

‘We are also going to produce information showing how good your data is and why it isn’t making it through to being live on the tool.’

Other information on the dashboard will include spending through NHS Supply Chain, Crown Commercial Services and the NHS national contracted products programme.