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 cost includes the agreed item charge to the pharmacy remember, they get it no matter the type of medication

Years ago there was an article in our local paper about one ward at our local hospital which did a trial of buying non clinical supplies outside the official procurement, so basics like loo rolls, stationery, paper towels, incontinence pads for beds, soap, etc. and they saved tens of thousands of pounds in a single year.

I have an office supplies client who got a contract for an offshoot of an NHS trust - they were a big firm supplying businesses. They did the common trick of having their catalogue/webportal showing inflated prices which they “negotiated” on a case by case basis with businesses by offering bulk discounts of average 50-60% as standard. The guy “negotiating” from the NHS offshoot agreed to a 10% discount thinking he’d got a good deal! Thousands of pounds of office equipment, stationery, etc that he grossly overpaid for. He’d have got it cheaper from virtually anywhere else if he’d shopped around or if he’d haggled a bit more!

I paid £1.99 for a box of 100 x 75mg of aspirin. I was just saying what the pharmacist told me. They also said that there had been a shortage of aspirin. I was pleasantly surprised to buy the 100 pack at £1.99 as I had previously been paying that, or more for a 32 pack.

It's hard enough to get paid correctly for our shifts and get study leave funded - getting us to pay and claim the cash back would not work!

Indeed they are, due to incompetence of nhs procurement staff.

Welcome to the world of preferred suppliers!!!!

When we order stationery (nhs) I’m absolutely cringing!!!! The waste is unreal. The cost of basic items like notebooks is just insane it really is. Infact they’ve actually taken some quite basic items off there now like highlighters, post it notes, and most people just buy their own from the pound shop!!! Infact last year, one of our consultants gave us all a gift bag with really nice stationery in it, notebooks, pens, pencils etc… a lovely mug, nice hot chocolate and latte sachets etc…. It was very thoughtful and we sent a thank you card to his wife 🤣 whod spent hours gathering lovely things!

Have you reported the person who is now working for the council? He must surely have hidden his criminal past?

I’m prescribed eyedrops for severe dry eye following surgery. Generic otc drops are £2.49, a big brand are £15. My GP can’t let me have the generic version but can prescribe the branded version!

The dispensing fee is about £1.50, nowhere near that price gap! Don't blame pharmacy.

The tories set rules so the nhs is inly allowed to make purchases for “approved companies” which have been seen to meet certain anti- fraud standards. The gist of which means it’s only possible to buy from either expensive or more expensive companies (linked to tory mp’s and their mates). The whole Covid PPE contract scandal is a small view of how the entire system is set up. Our deportment have repeatedly sourced supplies at a fraction of the usual price, but we’re not allowed to purchase as it’s not from the “approved” supplier.
Because there are compulsory high safety standards. The argument is non-approved suppliers cannot be used. This is reasonable to an extent for say, medicine or medical equipment. But allows millions to be wasted with this corrupt system which the rich privileged private companies benefit from.
There’s policies about policies! It ties everything into such a a massive complex knot. Common sense can’t be used. We have to buy £100 boxes of tourniquets with 100 in each and expiry date within months. The extra extra small size is rarely used but we can’t not have them available in case needed. So they get thrown out and restocked at a great expense, wastage and take up our limited storage space. We could buy a pack of ten for a couple quid on Amazon. But this isn’t allowed. So instead a privileged company gets our money.

The £9.80 is the prescription charge surely?

that said yes the nhs pays over the top for stuff. They waste lots of money and it needs sorting.

one thing that annoys me is crutches, boots for broken feet etc. they refuse them, why? They can get them deep cleaned and used again

someone told me they went for treatment and needed a syringe to be used. They come in packs of five, one is used the other 4 thrown away

thats why wastage and procurement need to be sorted now

The NHS (along with other public service bodies) is an unauditable mess. The wastage is staggering.

I get paracetamol on prescription. I take 8 a day every day. I would be at the shop constantly.

I also use a lot of other drugs that are prescription only.

This reminded me of how the NHS wasted tens of thousands of pounds in the 80s/90s when they took out the contract to allow patient records to be viewed wherever you were in the country. Having paid for the initial contract, every time they made changes they would pay a variation of contract fee as well as any additional costs incurred. They had failed to scope the project from the outset and would turn up at every meeting with a new change, sometimes minor, other times huge. The initial contract had been about £5m over a number of years. By the time I left they had spent over £16m in 5 years, abandoned the uncompleted project and went back out to tender a few years later. The project still isn’t complete.

In theory this is a great approach. However, there are a lot of people like me, who, because of chronic pain, or other conditions, are prescribed a regular dose of medication. So, for example, I am prescribed up to 8 paracetamol a day, and keeping up with buying that would mean I was at the shops every 3 days, becuase of the limit on purchase. I therefore get 250 at a time on prescription. I'd be happy to pay for these, but it's not an option to be able to buy so much. So, I get it prescribed.

Same with the ruinous PFI contracts for new hospitals - whoever signed the contracts on behalf of the NHS clearly didn't understand what they were signing (or didn't care).

It was a huge publicity stunt for Tony Blair and I don't think anyone asked any sensible questions about the interest rates (which are about 40% I think). The NHS will be paying massive amounts forever.

I know it’s not the same thing but my DH started on Mounjaro a few months ago. We’re both disabled so prescriptions are delivered.

Without fail every time a new Mounjaro pen is delivered there is a box of one hundred needle tips supplied with it. We use four a month !! I’ve tried calling the pharmacy and the GP surgery to try to get them stopped but still they come, and the pharmacy have advised that if they are returned to them they will be binned. When l looked online, the over the counter cost of these is over £100 per box, although l would imagine NHS sourcing is cheaper. It just seems like a pointless waste.

Not just hospitals either, also schools and health centres. Basically most "shiny new" things bought in that era will be being paid for by our children and grandchildren, all for the sake of photo opportunities for politicians!

I've said this a few times in different threads. My DH has treatable, but incurable cancer. He's on permanent chemotherapy drugs. We checked the "cost" as per the NHS pricing website (I know it's not definitive), one particular tablet is over £1k and the other is £300 per tablet. His prescription is for 3 of the former and 21 of the latter. In reality, with agreement of his haematologist, he actually takes only 2 of the former and 14 of the latter. Yet, instead of her reducing the prescription quantities, she carries on issuing prescriptions for the 3/21, so DH now has a box full of the "extras" he nevers takes. DH has asked her several times to adjust the prescription but she says it's "too hard" as any change needs some kind of approval/authorisation from some sort of committee. Pharmacy won't "not issue" the ones that aren't needed and says they can only issue exactly what's on the prescription. We've suggested to the pharmacy that we give them the "surplus" straight back over the counter upon collection so that they can be assured they've not been tampered with, but they say they'd just dispose of them. So, every single month, up to £3k of tablets issued unnecessarily and unused. That's just one patient. We've pointed this out to the haematologist but all she says is that "her dept" have the funding in her cost centre so it's not costing "her dept" to waste the tablets!

I wasnt blaming pharmacy at all! Just explaining that getting something on prescription has more costs associated with it than just the cost of the drug. I don’t expect pharmacists or their staff to work for free.

My friend is a district nurse. As you can imagine she does a lot of dressing changes. The dressings used to come in packs of 2 which is what she uses for the majority of her patients. They've now got a new supplier who only does packs of 4 dressing, so she has to throw 2 away every time as they need to be sterile so can't be kept for the next time. What a waste of money if this is repeated across many areas.

It's the same with the sticky things they use for ECG's - from memory, there are 4 wires to connect, but the pack of sticky things come in a pack of 8, so, again, half are binned with the nurse saying the same, that they can't hold them back and use for the next patient.

I think the pharmacist was wrong. Presumably the NHS pays the market cost of the medication (many well be more than £9.80, some less like aspirin). £9.80 is what the patient would have to pay, so more expensive medications are subsidised and probably no one's paying £9.80 for anything that's cheaper OTC.

the sticky dots for ecgs can definitely be left open and the unused ones be used for the next patient. Eventually if they're left long enough they'd probably dry out and become less useful but anywhere doing a reasonable frequency of ecgs isn't going to find that a problem.