A study commissioned by Travis Perkins Managed Services, part of Travis Perkins plc, has revealed that NHS Trusts across the UK could come closer to their targets and make significant savings each year by re-engineering their repair and maintenance (R&M) materials purchasing and management.
Undertaken by MindMetre Research, the study highlights that R&M currently costs NHS Trusts £4.4 billion every year and so is a key area to target for significant cost savings that won’t compromise on quality of care.
The study, Healthy Savings?, disproves the widely accepted notion that NHS Trusts outsource all R&M activity, finding that 78% of trusts have an internal R&M department, whilst 8% have mixed in-house and outsourced R&M, and only 14% outsource their R&M responsibility completely. Within the 78% of NHS Trusts that have kept R&M responsibilities in-house, there is significant inefficiency in purchasing, supplying and stocking materials. Targeting these inefficiencies leads to significant cost and time savings.
The authors of the study expect overall financial benefit in NHS Trusts to match that in other public services. Therefore Trusts that look to address R&M inefficiency, through initiatives such as appointing an outside agency to assume responsibility for purchasing and stocking materials, can be expected to see costs savings of 10%. The study profiled a Derbyshire NHS Trust that had identified weaknesses in the buildings maintenance supply chain and addressed this by forming a shared services initiative with two local councils and a housing association.
James Clack, Sales Director, Travis Perkins Managed Services, said: “With NHS Trusts under continued pressure to achieve significant cost savings, the smallest inefficiency can have a serious impact. Identifying the purchasing and management of R&M materials as a starting point, however, means NHS Trusts can begin to address the issue.
“Partnering with a business that improves and shortens the supply chain presents a viable way for organisations like the NHS Trusts to better meet budgets and reduce inefficiency. Bringing purchasing costs closer to the original supplier not only reduces costs, it also brings the benefit of product standardisation, which leads to high product quality and lower long-term costs.
“Cost savings for the NHS look set to match those achieved in other industries when partnering with an organisation for R&M materials, but one thing the report doesn’t take into account is the fact that non-availability of facilities, and resulting interruptions to clinical and care procedures, have a major consequential cost.
"These consequential costs have not been analysed in the current study, and so even greater cost savings could be achieved by improving R&M within NHS Trusts and thus helping to reduce the incidents of unavailable facilities.”