Southmead Integrated Community Hospital Project Proposal Outline

Southmead Integrated Community Hospital Project Proposal Outline for Procurement

Procurement Plan for Hospital Development

Work towards a lean strategy of development, where there is not an excess inventory and goods are procured as needed as much as possible.

This will increase the strategic sourcing, while avoiding transactional sourcing mistakes (Phillips, 2013).

Patient care can not be sacrificed (Pan American Health Organization, 2006).

It is crucial that all strategies for procurement think of the patients first. This will ultimately mean focusing on procurement for the departments first opening and then working on the ones that will be opening later in 2015.

Keep excellent records of data and spending

With new guidelines and regulations on hospital spending and procurement, it is crucial to keep pristine records for accounting and acceptance purposes (Department of Health, 2013).

Four Procurement Issues Faced by Procurement Managers in the NHS

A. Inefficiencies of the North Bristol NHS Trust procurement policies

a. The deadlines for these policy and procurement requirements are simply too tight. The Brunel Building is opening as soon as May 2014 and so hospital managers will not have the time to clear all the red tape through the NHS Trust.

i. Thus, they will have to make their own policies and procedures with unique deadlines that can later be accepted through the NHS Trust before the facility's final completion in 2015.

ii. This ultimately strains an already complicated job for management and increases the pressure by forcing management to create their own unique policy guidelines that must be disseminated to the rest of the project team (Department of Health, 2013).

b. Managers will have to study the guidelines and make their own assumptions of policy procedures in order to quicken the pace of construction without having to backtrack on procurement decisions above $25,000 are not acceptable under the NHS Trust advisory guidelines.

i. Strong background knowledge of these guidelines are needed to strengthen decisions on procurement.

B. The facility is promising so much, it will be difficult to get all goods and materials needed to fulfill the demands of every department on time for the opening.

a. The facility is going to offer maternity and neonatal facilities, along with neurosurgery, orthopedics, renal, plastics, burns, and emergency care services. This is a huge list of departments that all need top of the line resources and equipment.

i. The sheer variety of healthcare services being provided by the future facility will cause issues in the procurement stages.

ii. Gathering such vast resources and equipment will take a lot of effort and planning.

III. A Strategy to Handle Procurement for the UK Hospital

A. Extensively train management in the NHS Trust's procurement policies.

a. This will allow management to have an already extensive background in what is acceptable so that major decisions are not made in contrast to the NHS Trust's guidelines, which would only cause further delay.