Sponsored: ‘A paradigm shift in health outcomes and spending is coming, and we should be shouting about it’

SPONSORED

One of the biggest changes to the operation of the NHS in England is coming soon, but with little fanfare to date for the policies developed and about to be delivered by Labour’s health ministers. We should be making more of the coming change.

As the NHS Ten Year Plan acknowledged, when buying things, the “NHS has focused too much on lowest cost, rather than best value and outcomes”, and pledged to introduce a “fundamentally different approach to procurement” with the introduction in early 2026 of a new “value-based procurement (VBP) guidance for devices and digital products.”

The new VBP approach is not an extension of the analogue to digital shift, but is a paradigm shift in the understanding of where value lies in the procurement of medical and digital devices, and a wider range of consumable medical products. It will deliver significant improvements in patient experiences and outcomes; massively reduce overall costs to the health and care system; improve environmental impacts and deliver growth opportunities to the crucial UK life sciences sector.

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For the first time, the NHS in England will be adopting a methodology that sees purchasing decisions being dominated not by consideration of which product is cheapest, but by which is best at doing the job for which it is being purchased. It’s not rocket-science to suspect that when it comes to medical devices and products, the cheapest is unlikely to be the best in terms of getting patients well, discharged from care settings and back home where they should be.

From case studies in continence care to endoscopy, cardiac monitoring and atrial fibrillation, spending more on a better-performing product, used in a more appropriately configured service, has improved patient outcomes and overall costs to the NHS by, for example, reducing infections, hospital treatment episodes and staff time commitments.

For example, switching to a slightly more expensive absorbent continence pad, at the simpler end of the med-tech spectrum, could save the NHS at least £500 million a year, yet procurement managers are under pressure to buy the cheapest product regardless of the impact that decision has on patients lying in their own urine with the associated infection risks that cause avoidable bed-sores and urinary tract infections – big costs to the NHS already – to say nothing of the staff time and laundry costs involved in changing patients more frequently than should be necessary.

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Ministers are about to roll out a new methodology for the NHS in England that will, in future, see the price of an item account for no more than 40% of the value score it achieves when being assessed for procurement – and, hopefully, wise procurers will see that weighting reduce still further as the potential of huge cost savings becomes apparent.

A new value assessment methodology has been developed by the Department of Health and Social Care’s Medical Technology and Innovation Directorate to underpin the new VBP approach and its roll-out in England is imminent. It will have a major impact on costs, on patient experiences, on waiting lists and waiting times, all quietly below the radar.

We should be congratulating Labour ministers on this major development, and at Whitehouse Communications we are keen to continue to work with them, as we have been doing as experts in med-tech and health policy, to ensure that the new VBP model is adopted at pace for maximum impact.

Discussions are already afoot to see the methodology reflected in Scotland and Wales, and applied not just to medical and digital health devices, but also potentially to all products that the NHS purchases.

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There will be challenges for suppliers that need to be worked through as, for the first time, they will have the opportunity and the need to submit evidence to support their claims of improved outcomes for their products. Compiling that evidence, ideally in partnership with NHS institutions, should be a priority for those in the med-tech sector who want to benefit from the new approach. By so doing, they can deliver the economic growth the Government wants to see through the Life Sciences Sector Plan.

For the NHS and social care systems, there will need to be a re-think about who drives procurement – clinicians seeking better outcomes for their patients, or bean-counters driving everything down to the cheapest possible item price whilst piling up avoidable costs for other parts of the system. Ministers must ensure it’s the former, not the latter.

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