Time to work together, by Colin Whitehouse

7 Dec 06
Social care might not seem the most obvious area where procurement reform can reap savings, but there are a number of ways in which the method of supplying goods and services can be improved

08 December 2006

Social care might not seem the most obvious area where procurement reform can reap savings, but there are a number of ways in which the method of supplying goods and services can be improved

The government is focusing its attention on public procurement. Council buying is under the microscope and the latest policies emanating from Whitehall are all about aggregating purchasing power and harnessing modern technologies to generate efficiency savings.

Everyone agrees that better procurement can be valuable when it comes to buying furniture or computers. But can it improve the delivery of important public services?

The government believes it can, and a fresh priority for the National eProcurement Project is to help introduce new ways of buying into the field of social care.

It's a complicated and sensitive area. Social care concentrates on delivering quality services to the most vulnerable people. If you are ordering an office temp and they don't show up, the filing doesn't get done. But if a social worker temp fails to show, then people don't receive the care they urgently need.

There is a perception that new procurement practices in social care would be about driving down costs and could damage the quality of services. There is a concern, too, that new processes will slow down response times and hold people up.

These views are understandable, but not based on the experiences of a few innovative authorities. Cambridgeshire County Council is using mobile-based technologies to assess the care needs of the elderly.

Assessments can be done online in their home and beamed back to the office, where requests for resourcing are then triggered. It is more efficient, is saving money and it doesn't require people having to travel awkward distances to a council building.

Kent County Council has an online system that enables it easily to book beds in residential homes, whereas in the past staff would have had to spend ages ringing around.

So it is quite possible to bring modern procurement practices into the area of social care and have a positive impact on service delivery.

Outdated practices also mean many social care departments run the risk of disappearing under mountains of paperwork.

The introduction of basic eProcurement techniques — such as e-Invoicing — could save time, make the whole process a lot simpler and clearer, and leave people free to concentrate on strategic care priorities.

If an authority stops to examines its spend on care providers, there is a good chance it will find a far higher number of suppliers than it had imagined, and that some are probably working outside of standard, agreed contracts. There is a need for councils to develop a flexible range of care packages and tender for their provision.

However, even with improved processes there will always be a need to use a high number of providers to manage capacity within the system.

Two procurement techniques can be used efficiently here. Electronic tendering can slash the costs of handling tenders and responses and provide better quality information on the providers.

These providers will be able to register their interest online, be notified of opportunities, submit pre-qualification information once only, download the tender documents and electronically submit a response. This helps to reduce their costs, too, and should lead to more competitive prices. Prices can be easily compared electronically if they're based on care packages.

Electronic contract management is a natural consequence, as it enables better management of a large number of providers over the course of the contract. Information is better organised and audit trails are established and performance management improved.

Often better procurement is about information. It's much easier to make better decisions with one's eyes open.

Looking at the high spend on social care, the question of supply chain management has been raised. It already seems as if there might be a case for managing the whole supply chain.

Voluntary or charitable organisations that provide care could, for example, make use of the power of purchasing consortiums. There seems to be no good reason for not looking at opportunities to open up council corporate contracts so that care providers can buy their beds, food and furniture more cheaply.

While only a small number of authorities are using modern electronic procurement practices to buy social care services, interest in using new techniques is building.

Budgetary pressures are not going to go away, and with people living longer, social care professionals will have to review their buying processes, especially as people want more choice over what they receive.

No one is suggesting the introduction of modern procurement practices is easy. But it should be possible to reduce costs so that much-needed extra funding can go on frontline social care services — which is in everybody's interest.

Colin Whitehouse is chair of the National eProcurement Project

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