Posted on 11th November 2011
Salford Royal Foundation NHS Trust saves money
Through organisational changes, Salford Royal Foundation NHS Trust has run Integra for more than 10 years. Most recently, the Trust has implemented the Integra eSeries with the Integra Catalogue Expert (ICE) as part of a complete eProcurement solution. As a result, the Trust has saved money by streamlining order management, virtually eliminated paper and increased accuracy throughout the procurement process.
Prior to implementing the Integra eSeries eProcurement system, Salford Royal had a core group of staff in the purchasing and supplies department who received paper requests from other staff around the hospital, which were entered manually as a purchase order. Some departments that carried out a lot of ordering, such as theatres and pathology, were also given access to the core system to allow them to enter requisitions directly.
Diane Morrison, Assistant Director of Finance at Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, explains why they needed to change, "Our Trust has developed a programme designed to safely reduce costs without impacting front-line services and patient care. We quickly identified the potential cost savings we could achieve through greater automation, in terms of streamlining processes, removing duplication of effort and generally improving the accuracy and efficiency of our procurement requirement."
Morrison continues, "The manual process of procurement within the hospital was slow and cumbersome. At times approvals were inconsistent and difficult to manage and it took a bit longer than we hoped to deal with urgent queries. This added extra administration layers that we really wanted to remove."
Salford Royal is enjoying a number of important benefits from the system. "Eradicating paper from the purchasing process has improved our efficiency. Electronic purchasing has made the process much quicker for the end user and has resulted in much more effective and efficient operations. The system has also given us improved standardisation in terms of the products we purchase. Every time an order is placed for a particular product, it is from the same place so it has a consistent description," says Morrison.
She adds, "The increased efficiency has allowed us to reduce the amount of administration we need to run the procurement system, which has allowed us to safely reduce costs. The system also provides seamless integration with NHS SBS CPS through GHX, which gives them better visibility of our demand."
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