Trust plays its part in Carter agenda

With Lord Carter’s recent ‘Productivity and Efficiency’ review suggesting some £5 bn could be saved annually by acute Trusts in England by 2020 via activities such as ‘smarter’ procurement and better use of existing estate, the Procurement and Commercial team at Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust have been working intensively to play their part. More efficient procurement, securing better deals on utility costs, and cutting the cost, and improving the efficiency of, sterile services activities, are among a wide range of initiatives championed by the team that have seen it deliver a £1.1 m cost reduction for the Trust in 2015-2016, with a £1.2 m saving predicted this year, and a ‘value creation’ of over £2 m. The Trust’s commercial services team has also developed and supports an ever-expanding range of innovative new products and services, and launched spin-off companies to market them. As HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, discovered, these range from a bedstacker designed to reduce the number of empty hospital beds left in corridors, to a fully managed service for Trusts wanting to install solar canopies in their car parks.

With its main site the Salisbury District Hospital on the outskirts of the city, Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust delivers a wide range of acute and specialist healthcare services as a ‘district general’ for Wiltshire, Hampshire, and Dorset. Its specialist services cover 11 m people stretching from Brighton in the east to Cornwall in the west. The 500-bed hospital is especially well-known for its specialist burns care and treatment, and is also one of seven regional spinal units in the country. Many of the soldiers injured during the Second World War – a number of whom had suffered horrific burns injuries – were treated at the hospital, which, the Trust’s commercial manager, Simon Dennis, told me in an interesting aside as our discussions began, was one of the first receiving centres for troops injured in the D-Day landings. Today its regional Duke of Cornwall Spinal Unit, meanwhile, treats burns patients from as far afield as west Cornwall. The hospital is also is a regional treatment centre for patients affected by cleft lip and palate conditions, and a genetics ‘centre of excellence’. 

Meeting with me at the Trust’s Procurement Department offices, Simon Dennis explained that his own professional background – he joined the Trust and its Procurement team two years ago – has had a significant impact in his driving the team’s activities down a somewhat more commercial route than might be ‘the norm’ in many NHS Trusts. On leaving school, he initially worked for eight years as a desk trader for Credit Suisse, and, after a change in direction, spent time as a brand manager with large FMCG companies such as Kraft Foods and the Electrolux Group. Subsequent roles included commercial lead at the National Air Traffic Control Service, and procurement manager for media conglomerate, Northcliffe Media