NHS urged to deal with financial crisis
Pharmaceutical wholesaler AAH is calling on the NHS to adopt new business models. This follows the Health Secretary’s recent admission
of a £140m deficit in the NHS, and a pledge to support struggling
NHS trusts with urgent reform and
innovation.
According to Steve Dunn, group managing director, AAH, 80 per cent of
hospitals across the country owe in excess of £1m of commercial
debt to pharmaceutical wholesalers, dating back over two years. This
is an addition to, and distinct from their deficit to the Department
of Health.
Mr Dunn said: “Wholesalers are not charities, nor should we be
acting like banks by giving hospitals overdrafts. We are in a cleft stick
situation, as refusing to supply drugs until hospitals pay up means patients
would suffer.”
He also explained that in order to meet the needs of the patients, full-line
wholesalers carry an extensive range of drugs rather than only stocking
the more profitable fast-moving lines. He said: “This enormous
contribution to the NHS and the health care industry has, for many years,
been ignored by government and industry alike.”
Mr Dunn is calling on the Audit Commission, which is tackling problems
of financial mismanagement in the NHS through an advisory group, to include
commercial input within this group. He stated that pharmaceutical wholesalers
are already helping struggling hospitals and trusts to refinance and
rationalise their operation.
Mr Dunn went on to say that exploiting e-procurement and streamlining
the supply chain between hospital pharmacies, their finance departments
and suppliers might have averted the current spending crisis. He stated: “Only
around half of hospital pharmacies use web-based e-procurement order
management systems, relying instead on inefficient and error-prone faxes
and telephones. Many systems even within the same hospital are incompatible.
No commercial organisation would survive with multiple systems.”
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Hospital Pharmacist