NHS - massively overpaying for basic items

[allmycats]

Why are the NHS still paying stupid inflated prices for basic items ?
In the chemist today I bought 100 low dose aspirin for £1.99
The lady said you can ask for these on the NHS and I said that as they are not much money I was happy to pay for them. She then told me that they would have cost the NHS £9.80 for the same thing.
The government need to really look into this sort of massive wastage and stop suppliers vastly overcharging.

The pharmacist was incorrect. Generic over the counter items should only be provided on prescription when its an ongoing long term need which the patient would otherwise struggle to afford.

https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/access-our-data-products/epact2/dashboards-and-specifications/over-counter-items-which-should-not-be-routinely-prescribed-primary-care

There is guidance

OR struggle to obtain. For example some patients may be prescribed 8 paracetamol per day. The number you can buy over the counter is, I believe, 32, so a four day supply which is a non starter for many people.

However I believe that the NHS does indeed waste money of
n a vast and industrial scale on purchasing everyday items such as milk, basic medical items and hugely inefficient IT processes. It’s a nightmare for someone to untangle.

Good luck, Andy.

more here

Years ago I was a deputy ward manager and we needed some large plastic boxes for the store cupboard. Going on the purchasing system each box was about £30 iirc. I was too embarrassed to waste that amount of money and went to b&m and bought them out my own money for about £3 each. Bonkers. If you multiply this waste in every department in every hospital then the amount of money being wasted will be off the scale.

I was chatting to a nurse at our local community hospital a few years ago, when it was under threat of closure to save money.

She told me that they'd had to order a new fridge via NHS procurement, and when she came to sign off the paperwork she saw that it was 5x the price it would have been had she just gone to a shop and bought it.

Presumably that’s not because the NHS would pay more for the actual medication though, it’s because they pay for the medication plus a dispensing fee for the pharmacy on top (plus of course the cost of the NHS issuing the prescription in the first place which isn’t included in that cost).

It’s the same in schools. £1500 to have a plug socket moved along a wall. They’re all over a barrel with PFIs. It is scandalous.

There should be a simple rule that if an nhs staff member can purchase the item more cheaply via retail channels, they do so & get reimbursed.

This. Having worked in both community and hospital pharmacies, it's not that the NHS is paying inflated prices for the tablets themselves. A lot of people, time and effort are involved in providing items on prescription compared to someone just buying a box over the counter and it's the fees for all the work involved that bump up the price the NHS ends up paying

Yes but it balances out because you also pay £9.90 for drugs that cost hundreds or thousands of pounds everywhere else.

A family member works for a company that sells fridges. They don’t offer a 3 year warranty so the NHS won’t buy from them. Instead they buy from one of their customers (who buy their fridges from family member) at almost twice the price, and the failure rate of fridges and the make up is such that they just agree to replace them within 3 years if they break.

It would be cheaper for the NHS to buy them from family member and just replace the ones that break outside of their 1 year warranty, but procurement reckons buying them with a mark up is better value for money.

When I was discharged from hospital following pneumonia, I was given a bag of pain meds - morphine, and about a months worth of ibuprofen and paracetamol, which I didn’t ask for. I was crippled with pain and was more or less bed bound for weeks. I have always been surprised that I was given OTC medication, although that bag was a lifesaver and always within reach. @MatildaTheCat thank you for explaining

Problem is someone would scam the nhs doing this. I used to work for a water company and people were always getting sacked and/or arrested for shit like this. My first week in the job my line manager and deputy were both arrested (ended up in prison, one of them is now head of finance for the council after doing his jail sentence). People would do fake invoices, receipts, etc.

That's incorrect. A pharmacist can use their discretion to sell larger amounts of paracetamol over the counter without a prescription.

The 2 packs limit is for retailers with no pharmacy counter eg a supermarket.

Public sector procurement is the biggest scam and waste of money going

i work in a college and the price we pay for stuff because it’s on a framework is insane. Even book my hotels - I asked recently if I could just book a Travelodge for £100 because the prices coming up in the system were literally insane (think 400 for a basic chain hotel a ring up from a Travelodge) and was told no.

My mum lives in a social housing place with a community centre. The hot water boiler for teas and so on broke. They sourced one on Wicks for about 60. No. Had to be through an approved supplier and was 350 plus vat

its madness

Not hard to just order them online. Amazon lets you order as much as you like

I worked as an IT supplier for many years. There are large numbers of cottage industries within Procurement. For the staff long may it continue as it keeps them in jobs!

Can you imagine the savings if it was centralised.

But this buying of things with public money but not procurement is exactly why we ended up with the PPE scandal which cost millions.

That sounds like the prescription charge rather than what it cost the NHS.
Are you sure she didn't mean you would get charged £9.80 through NHS.

My relatives are going through a personal injury claim and the taxi company the insurance company set up are milking them. We even use Uber sometimes and take the hit because the cost is just eye watering.. A journey that should be a few £s is £8-£10
Each time. Plus the taxi company put a charge on to start with because it's on an account.

They wanted a new outside light fitted , the electrics are already done, they just wanted a replacement light and the solicitor / occupation health must have someone they always use for a backhander because they put in a quote for over £300 . My relative did it himself.
The Occupational Health had 2 quotes to do home improvements to help my relative round the house and they went with the same guy as above ,even though he was a lot more expensive but they used the excuse the other guy wasn't available anytime soon, (there was another thousand companies they could've got a quote from). He then milked it and added a new fuse box which the other guy said it didn't need and they just added more and more jobs and gave the builder guy more work, so we think the builder was either connected to one of them or they were getting a cut of the money. Yet, It was annoying that when the relative needed a mobility scooter to help make life easier the Ocuupational Health woman didn't want her to have it, they moaned about the cost, because they would've had to buy this from a shop and would have to produce receipts so they couldn't make any money from this.

The bills to the insurance company have been crazy , on top of the solicitors who are already getting paid over a £1m ..No wonder insurance is through the roof for the public, the scams that go on throughout the system are paid for by us.

We’ve just paid £514 for two of the most basic microwaves you have even seen

Of if the quality is beyond that available OTC

Any job I’ve had with government contracts they have been an insanely high day rate, there’s no haggling by the government, just lucrative contracts for your mates.

A friends elderly parent gets paracetamol via prescription because she takes 8 per day.