NHS Innovations North

Purchase & supply


  1. NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency (PASA)
  2.  
  3. National framework contracts

  4. Individual Trust based contracts

  5. Logistics contracts

  6. Consortium contracts

  7. How does the tendering process work?


NHS PASA [Top]

The NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency (PASA) was established in 2000 as an executive agency of the Department of Health. It acts as a strategic advisor to the NHS on supply related issues and as a centre of excellence in purchasing and supply matters, additionally facilitating best practice and effective purchasing decisions by the NHS.
PASA's aim is to ensure that markets remain attractive to suppliers by effectively managing the supplier base. This may involve "introducing competition to certain markets where necessary, identifying new products and suppliers, monitoring quality, ensuring continuity of supply and negotiating the best possible terms".
PASA negotiates contracts and purchasing arrangements for products and services that can then be accessed by the whole of the NHS in England. These contracts take a number of forms:


National framework contracts [Top]

The NHS as a public sector organisation must meet the requirements of EU public procurement directives, which ensure open and fair competition - this requires that contracts over 100 thousand pounds (for supplies and services) must be advertised. This is in the Supplement to the Official Journal of the European Communities (OJEC) which is published daily. These adverts enable parties to express an interest in the majority of national contracts. Alternatively, PASAs specialist buyers can be contacted directly by a company to introduce its products and they can also advise on the opportunities open in a particular market (e.g. diagnostic medical equipment). A directory of their senior purchasing staff can be found by contacting PASA directly


Individual Trust based contracts [Top]

These allow the purchase of goods and services directly from suppliers under 'call off' contracts. Trusts themselves have their own budget and purchase through national contracts but also have local contracts with suppliers as managed by the trust's supply department. For local Trust contracts, each Trust has a Supply Manager that can be contacted via PASA


Logistics contracts [Top]


Goods are bought by the national NHS Logistics Authority and stored in its network of warehouses across the country. They then sell the goods on to NHS organisations. NHS Logistics provides a dedicated break bulk service to trusts, authorities and other health -related bodies by consolidating bulk deliveries from suppliers and breaking these down to appropriate units of issue to suit end users. A catalogue of available contracts can be accessed by contacting PASA directly. Example categories include Anaesthetics, Blood Collection and Medical Diagnostics


Consortium contracts [Top]

A group of Trusts work together to negotiate larger contracts. They can also form a consortium with other trusts to negotiate contracts. The specific areas that PASA negotiate contracts in include:

  • Diagnostic medical equipment - major medical equipment such as x-ray machines, scanners, pathology analysers
  • Medical - cardiology and cardiovascular products, orthopaedic implants, pressure area care products, angiography, cardiac imaging equipment, decontamination, dressings
  • Medical consumables - medical textiles, incontinence products, urology, anaesthetics
  • Pharmaceuticals - drugs, anaesthetic gases, vaccines, blood products
  • Rehabilitation services - prosthetic products and services, orthotic products and services, hearing aids, walking aids, wheelchair products and services, rehabilitation equipment.

The Agency works with around 400 NHS trusts and health authorities and manages 3,000 national purchasing contracts, influencing around half of the 7 billion pounds spent in the NHS on purchasing goods and services in the health service.

The NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency sees its links with suppliers as a key part of its role in improving purchasing practice and performance. In a bid to increase the participation of SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises) in NHS PASA contracts and ensure that the market place is accessible to all suppliers, the Agency claims to provide specific help and support to SMEs and new businesses. It produces a regularly updated booklet aimed at "helping suppliers to understand how the organisation operates and also to provide details of key contacts within the organisation".

The booklet - called Selling to the NHS - can be downloaded at www.pasa.nhs.uk/suppliers. A helpline to help companies with any aspect of selling into the NHS, including quality standards, compliance with public procurement procedures, market structure, pricing and customer requirements is available by contacting PASA.

PASA is also interested in innovation - their view is "new ideas and new ways of doing things can help the NHS deliver better health care" and as such can be contacted directly to discuss new products.


How does the tendering process work? [Top]

Where the contract has been offered out to tender via OJEC (Official Journal of the European Communities) there are three types of tender procedure available to buyers (under EU regulations):

  • The open procedure: This is available in all circumstances and involves a single stage approach where all candidates may respond to the OJEC advertisement and all offers received must be considered.
  • The restricted procedure: This is available in all circumstances and involves a two stage approach where candidates who respond to the OJEC advertisement will be considered to have expressed an interest and the buyer will then from these shortlist a number of candidates to submit offers.
  • The negotiated procedure: This is only available in a very limited number of circumstances and is subject to strict conditions.
  • The restricted procedure is most commonly used and in this the buyer must allow a minimum of 37 days from the date the OJEC notice was dispatched to the closing date from receipt of expressions of interest. Once shortlisting has taken place, a minimum of 40 days must be allowed for offers to be returned.

A supplier information database has been created (NHS-sid) by PASA that acts a prequalification and tender support system and makes supplier generated tender support information (company profiles) available electronically to all NHS supplies teams in England. This reduces the administrative burden on suppliers by removing the need for suppliers to send tender support information in hard copy to individual NHS trusts.

©2006 A project delivered by RTC North Ltd, Registered in England No 2373630. 1 Hylton Park, Wessington Way, Sunderland, UK, SR5 3HD.