Forms and Documents

Procurement and Supply Chain

December 2020

Welcome to our monthly newsletter which gives a round-up of news across our team. Going into winter, our hospitals continue to be increasingly busy with Covid patients and patients with acute illnesses. The Trust has also been making great efforts to run usual elective activity in October and November. Against this backdrop of operational pressure, it’s an enormous achievement that we have managed to make progress on so many of the initiatives below. Thank you for your continued dedication and team work to make these happen, I am very proud to be part of our Procurement and Supply Chain team.

A reminder – please ensure you have the flu jab to protect yourself, your families and our patients this year – details on WeShare.
Thank you to everyone who completed their staff survey – it is confidential and means the Trust can understand the feedback from staff and how we can improve as an organisation and make working lives easier.

Best wishes to you all,
Lucie

Systems and Data team

The recent extensive Oracle upgrade from version 12.1.3 to 12.2.9 and a move to Oracle Cloud for resilience at the same time was completed without major issue. A big ‘thank you’ to the Oracle Systems Team in association with our Service Provider, Version 1 and the relevant Key Users in ensuring successful transition.
The user interface (UI) with enhanced functionality is modern and we are working with ICT to make mobile applications a reality. This will allow us to raise, review and approve purchase requisitions on mobile devices like tablets via external facing websites. It will also provide us with an effective DR (Disaster Recovery) planning.

Over the past few months and in promotion of agile working, the systems team have supported the introduction of DocuSign and the implementation of Procurement Operations Helpdesk software called Alemba (ASM) to enhance Procurement Department customer service delivery.

Procurement Operations Helpdesk

Welcome Rahima Farook to the Procurement Operations team.
Launch of the Alemba Helpdesk software has happened; it will help us to measure our customer service and improve communications across the team, particularly whilst working remotely. Thank you to all the team involved in this and leading the embedding of the software and helping our stakeholders through the change involved.

Supply Chain

Supply Chain storage strategy – Due to safety concerns in the Princess Alexandra Building and capacity challenges, with the exception of 1 weeks PPE stock and R&D central stores, all remaining PPE is being moved to an off-site storage facility in Brentwood. Excess Nightingale ICU consumable stock has also been moved out to this facility so Barts can benefit from using it across our hospitals. The Supply Chain Team have been busy setting up Brentwood stocks onto Atticus and creating a PPE & ICU consumables hub. Stocks will be called in to sites from Brentwood as and when required. All stock movement will be recorded within Atticus once set up is complete.

WX Energy Centre Proposal – In the longer term, the strategy is to convert part of the WX Energy Centre into an onsite fit-for-purpose Supply Chain storage facility. This feeds into the Trusts Emergency Planning & wider Procurement strategy. A feasibility proposal has been submitted to the Investment Steering Committee for review.

Atticus Project – Newham Intensive Care Unit is now live on Atticus as of the beginning of November. Preparation work continues to implement Atticus in RLH & WX ICU’s. A lot of the team’s focus has been re-routed to manage the move to the Brentwood facility and associated Atticus implementation.

PPE – Continuation of ongoing daily PPE monitoring and ensuring we have sufficient stocks across the Trust for now and future pandemic peaks. Current levels are good with the exception of FFP3’s whereby we are generally running at around 7-10 days’ worth of stock.

Recruitment – 2 fixed term roles have been recruited for the Supply Chain Team. Jason Carty appointed as Band 7 Deputy Head of Supply Chain for SBH and Matt Roy as Band 6 Operational Support Officer for WX, NUH and ME. This strengthens the Supply Chain Management structure and provides greater presence and resilience across sites during these challenging times.

Sourcing

On the recruitment front, we have a new starter, Stephen Brown joining us as our Pathology Procurement Business Partner. Stephen will report to Brad and be responsible for transforming and consolidating the contractual landscape of the Pathology Partnership incorporating Homerton and Lewisham and Greenwich with Barts Heath acting as host organisation. Stephen recently worked as a Senior Commercial Manager at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and led multi-£M complex outsourcing deals. The ICT Business Partner role is about to be appointed.

Brexit – we set up a small team of Supply-Chain & Sourcing staff to review existing clinical and non-clinical contracts, including Covid-19 and ICU consumables to ensure anything bought post 31 December will not be delayed at the border. Regardless of a deal or no deal, there will be changes to custom arrangements and this means we need to ensure supply-chain continuity of mission critical products. DHSC has undertaken a thorough review of supplier arrangements and tested supply-chain delivery plans. Our team is focussing on all the non-DHSC suppliers where we may need to buy consumables from the EU. Stakeholder communications on activity completed to date and assurance plans will be communicated in mid-November. If you wish to find out more on DHSC preparations, you can join these mission critical webinars by viewing the attached link: Critical Projects

Joint Work plan – in line with procurement collaboration across North East London ICS, the Sourcing team have been collaborating with Homerton and BHR on a short to medium term work plan. The ambition is to aggregate spend and seek competitive pricing and value add by approaching suppliers as a single customer. We’re doing this for Trocars, Surgeons Gloves and Clinical Waste containers and for the medium term propose to leverage our spend in the Orthopaedics Hips & Knees category.

Advise Inc – Procurement Dashboard & Price Performance Benchmarking Tool. We have invested in a Spend Analytics tool to provide all Sourcing staff, including Buyers, with a cleansed data tool to slice spend opportunities and benchmark our price performance relative to other Trusts. Our ambition has always been to be in the Top 10 Procurement League table and by using this tool in a disciplined way it will assist in improving our price performance and negotiation strategy.

Sourcing Successes – we recently received the green light from Homerton & Lewisham to sign our multi-£M Pathology LIMS STP Contract with CliniSys. Working with ICT, the Sourcing team have been negotiating key contract terms since August with CliniSys by consolidating existing operations into a single contract arrangement. This has been a complex journey and our patients across North East London will benefit by seeing their pathology results turned around in rapid time through an investment in hardware and commercial terms to drive performance.