FEATURE NHS SUPPLY CHAIN: WHERE NEXT?


Much has been written on the PPE shortages in hospitals over recent weeks. Here, Ed Bradley, Founder and Director of Virtualstock, asks what the National Health Service could learn from the industries that were well equipped to deal with the pandemic.


Having seemingly upended every industry with dramatic speed, the COVID-19 crisis will no doubt be the catalyst for significant change in many sectors. This is particularly true with regard to supply chains which have been under enormous strain throughout the global pandemic to keep supply with many operators having struggled to cope with the spike in demand.


There are few industries, however, that experienced the sudden and sharp surge in demand that the NHS did in the weeks from March to May 2020. The need for a wide range of items such as PPE products, food, linen, and IT equipment, spiked in a way not seen in a generation. The dramatic upturn in demand was generated by hospitals dealing with victims of the virus as well as those preparing for a large anticipated influx of patient admissions.


There has been a lot written about shortages of PPE products in recent weeks.The reason why the UK’s much-loved NHS was left with an acute shortage of vital equipment will inevitably be reviewed and debated over the coming months as we eventually get on top of the pandemic. It is essential, however, that we draw on examples in industries that were able to cope and, indeed thrive in this crisis.


There is no question that online sales became the lifeblood of the retail sector during lockdown. Even now, as the restrictions start to ease, retailers with the strongest e-commerce offering are better equipped by far to weather the storm. While Amazon is the obvious showcase; traditional retailers such as John Lewis, Argos, Dixons and others also fared well online during this period. The reason for this is that in order to maximise revenue and profitability, they have invested over the years in providing their customers with extensive choice while delivering the best possible experience.


As online consumers, we expect to see vast ranges of products with beautiful images and descriptions. We want assurance that what we want is available to us, tomorrow at the latest, and when we make our purchase, we want to know where our precious order is every step of the way.


We consumers are fickle and will take our business elsewhere at the drop of a hat if we cannot find what we are after. To allow us to take product availability for granted, the retailer’s systems are processing a huge amount of rapidly changing data in real-time from many thousands of suppliers; including their stock levels, to provide the best possible chance of fulfilment.


If we look at this in contrast to the key characteristics of the health sector, we see some notable differences. The NHS is primarily serviced by one major supplier,


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As with many industries, the NHS also has a number of legacy systems that were installed 20+ years ago. The result is that hospital procurement teams are often expected to manage the supplier’s data on their behalf, as it needs to be manually uploaded into the legacy systems. This dramatically reduces the number of suppliers and products that a hospital can realistically deal with. In turn, this makes it harder to quickly find new suppliers and products with no stock information to inform buyers of quantities available to purchase. This lack of visibility across the many thousands of suppliers, prepared to sell to the NHS, dramatically slows product sourcing.


It is not to say that the retailers do not have issues of their own, they certainly do, and they also have legacy systems running large parts of their businesses. However, the modern technology we consumers have forced retailers to adopt, interoperates with these systems in a way that we will never be exposed to.


We will continue enjoying complete visibility across thousands of suppliers and millions of products without a thought to what made it possible. It is time that the hospitals were given this consumer experience.


www.virtualstock.com/ www.tomorrowshs.com


NHS Supply Chain, which is the contracted carrier of many product categories. As a result, other suppliers have diminished their stock levels of these categories, sometimes all together. As would happen with any single supplier, when hit with unprecedented demand for essential products, such as PPE, stock levels ran dry, leaving hospitals trying to find alternative suppliers to source the products from.


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