New procurement hub to put together national nursing agency framework

Four NHS procurement bodies are working together on the creation of a new national nursing agency framework for the NHS and other public sector organisations.
Fri, 4 Oct 2013
Four NHS procurement bodies are working together on the creation of a new multi-million pound national nursing agency framework for the NHS and other public sector organisations, with a spend of around £325m a year.

The four leaders on the project are NHS Commercial Solutions, NHS North of England Commercial Procurement Collaborative, the East of England NHS Collaborative Procurement Hub and the NHS London Procurement Partnership (LPP).

Richard Humble, interim workforce lead, agency & professional services team, LPP, told a recent meeting of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) Health Sector group that the spend would be about £75m in each region and £100m in London.

Humble said that following the completion of the pre-qualification questionnaire stage by November, suppliers would be audited by the end of Janaury, with the new framework due to go live in May 2014. Although a national framework, it will consist of four regional lots to allow for differing market conditions in each region.

An LPP spokeperson tells Recruiter that 3.1m hours of agency nursing were supplied through its London regional agency framework last year.

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