Safety to get more priority over cost in NHS buying decisions

Medical devices should be judged more on the value they bring to a wider health economy than just the price of the items, according to draft Department of Health and Social Care procurement guidance seen by HSJ.

The draft methodology, produced by Department of Health and Social Care’s MedTech directorate, outlines how “value” should be given a minimum weighting of 60 per cent while price should have a maximum weighting of 40 per cent when procurement teams are evaluating which products to buy. The “value” weighting will include a minimum of 10 per cent which must be applied to social value, which is already a requirement for all public procurements.

This would reverse established practice across many procurements that sets the price of products or services as the most important factor, at times to the detriment of products that provide greater value to a health economy.

It is intended to be used for all procurements of medical devices. It came from the 2023 MedTech strategy, which “identified that the value of medtech products should not be considered in isolation but across the whole patient pathway and that lowest price does not always translate to best value,” it said.

The plan is for it to become one of a set of commercial ”playbooks” produced by NHS England as part of the implementation of its national commercial strategic framework, which it published in November 2023. The draft methodology should bring consistency to how the NHS judges value in a procurement and to the evidence suppliers produce to support their offering. This should mean effective products are adopted more widely and their system-wide benefits to patient pathways are realised at scale.

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Source: HSJ, 30 April 2024