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Ok weve all done it and had favourites and are you not fed up with the sell and run attitude as i have spent alot with a supplier .unanmed. and they have sold and run. This has left me now with little faith and even asking for manuals need to be paid for and has anyone had the same. A database of the issues would be good for NHS only. Happy to share views as in this climate i feel they should be a little more leanent. Also 20% VAt increase and they increased their prices and again with the Euro and what has the NHS gained apart from greedy comapnies and reps. We need to stand uo to this and soon.

I was talking to a rep for a well known company and he said that his attitude was "Not this sale but the next one". It was easy to make a sale but he wanted people to keep coming back so gave service and looked at the bigger picture. The company had a reputation for the reps staying longterm.
I know another rep who had a three year plan for each job, one year knowing the territory, one making money and one looking for the next job.
It is the latter ones that you need to be aware of.
I think we all know the good and bad companies but saying it in a public forum might lead to lawyers making even more money than all the medical companies put together.
Robert

Has the NHS abandoned all those (variously named) central purchasing and supplies organisations, then?

To my mind, this is but one result of the National Health Service being spun off into hundreds of little "profit" (cost?) centres - greedy little money-orientated set-ups known as Trusts. And all supposedly (as in "pretending to be") in competition with one another. As always, it was sold on the idea of "getting a better deal for the patient", plus "increased efficiencies" and all the rest. Blah, blah, blah.

It's about time the NHS was re-nationalized, in my opinion. The scale (size, geography etc.) of Great Britain lends it self to having certain elements of the infrastructure in the Public Sector proper (that is, "nationalized"). I would include the roads, the railways, energy supplies ... and the health service. But that's not about to happen any time soon, is it?

Speak for yourself, Paul. Not all of us are mugs.


Yeah, right. But don't hold your breath there, Mate. When I come on here taking about gougers (and without mentioning any names) ... I start receiving threats about calls from the sponsors to have me banned from the site!

The concept of Free Speech is as good as dead in this country now. Don't you read the papers?

Where I am working at present a group of Trusts are getting together in a partnership and are extracting better deals from the companies by using their bigger buying power.
Now if the health trusts were to get together to form a large partnership for the whole country it would have an even better buying power.
I would call it the Health Service for the Nation......or something similar.
Robert

Hello all, ill try to offer an opinion from the other side of the fence. I manage a small company that sell direct to hospitals but like OEM's we suffer at the hands of currency and VAT changes as well.

I would pick up what Geoff mentions above about the fractured nature of the NHS supply structure. It is just as hard from the outside to get in as it is from the inside to find a reliable source.

I remember when SID4Health was supposed to be the answer to all of the NHS woes... a central purchasing network worth saving £100's of millions in purchasing cost. I think it closed last year...

NHS supply chain is much of the same. The intention is right but the application is woefully mismanaged. If there was a central portal for suppliers to clearly offer their wares with clearly outlined T&C's, warranty + extras supplied we would probably all save loads of money.

The problem is that, because this does not exist, that purchasing through the UK can be run by different departments, PCT's, hospital groups, central and non central structure, it means the potential vendors have to invest massive amounts of money into reaching the right people. They have to invest in sales staff that are willing to travel and visit customers and operate in a finite market with new technology constantly being released and in a job market where commission only staff in the UK are almost non existent. If you offer somebody a secure salary (with todays staffing laws) it is an investment you can not afford to get wrong. So this attracts a "type" of mercenary salesperson and mindset from a company that is 100% self serving they have to be aggressive enough to get out and get the job done and get their return. This in turn causes the poor service and short termism mentioned above. These guys only care about the next sale because its a situation that only rewards these types of people.

My only advice is to vote with your feet, punish those that sell you short by hitting them in the pocket and im sure you will see a change their strategy in the future...

What's that Andy ... only one "business lunch", rather than, er, hundreds?

Oh no, that will never do.

http://www.health.qld.gov.au/hspl/tenders_contracts/2010-12ind_brf_bklt.pdf

What QLD Health in Australia do.