October 06, 2014 Opinion piece
The Department of Health (DH) has mandated the use of GS1 standards throughout the NHS.
This article first appeared in National Health Executive magazine in October 2014.
The eProcurement Strategy, which was published in May, sets out how use of technology and taking a cohesive approach to procurement based on global standards, national infrastructure and local delivery can help trusts save £1.5bn by the end of 2015-16, with the savings then building significantly over the coming years due to vastly more efficient processes.
What GS1 standards do
GS1 standards, put simply, provide globally-unique identification for ‘things’.
These ‘things’ can be anything that is procured (scalpels, uniforms, trolleys, medicines, food etc), but also extend to include anything within a hospital that can be identified such as patients, shelves and patient records.
Once identified, things can also be tracked. This makes effective recalls possible in instances where defective implants are found, and simple barcode scans performed at every stage of the process (such as on both drugs and patient, to ensure that the two match) ensure that the risk of never events occurring is greatly reduced. Essentially GS1 standards help ensure that the right patient receives the right treatment at the right time.
Our standards are already in use in other sectors – the UK retail industry, for example, saves an estimated £10.9bn per year through the use of GS1 barcodes for products. Significant cost savings are possible within healthcare too.
The journey to compliance
For many hospitals, GS1 standards are already in use to some extent although they might not all realise it. The following three steps provide the best approach for most to getting started with adoption.
1 – Prove the business case
While the mandate obviously serves as its own imperative, the business case also needs to be made by communicating the long-term procurement cost savings, operational efficiencies, time savings for front-line staff and improved patient safety benefits.
To help quantify these benefits, the below are case studies provided at a healthcare conference we hosted in July:
- Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust launched an efficiency programme in January 2010 that put new systems in place supported by data standards. The impact on inventory management was significant, with trauma stock being reduced by £434,000 by May 2014.
- Cambridge University Hospitals NHS FT launched a ward and clinic programme last year, and they estimate that the resulting increased efficiencies have saved them 30,000 hours of clinical time, which equates to 15 full time equivalents. They stressed that the aim was not to take those posts out of the system, but instead to release the time back to nursing and front-line patient care.
- Mark Stevens MCIPS, service development manager at Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS FT, provided a case study on an inventory management programme that included implementing standards – the average time nurses spent looking for stock was cut from 3.3 hours per week down to less than 30 minutes through this programme.
2 – Find an executive advocate
Once the business case has been made, getting it onto the board’s agenda and identifying an executive board member to act as an advocate for the project are the next steps.
This is a challenge in itself, as Barry Mellor, non-executive director at the Rotherham NHS FT, points out: “The whole eProcurement and wider procurement programme is critically important, but it’s new – so it needs to be fitted into the board’s agenda and priorities.”
3 – Get started on an area of adoption now
Identify the areas where quick gains can be made – the obvious place to start is location and patient identification.
Global Location Numbers (GLN) are the GS1 identifiers for locations. These are used to identify both companies and locations, including source and destination addresses as well as internal physical locations such as storage bins.
Global Service Relation Numbers (GSRN) are the GS1 identifiers for patients. These are assigned to all individuals entitled to receive care from the NHS and are based on their NHS number. It is already a required standard (NHS ISB 1077) for NHS hospitals in England to issue patients with GS1-encoded wristbands.
Next best step - suppliers
The mandate does not explicitly apply to suppliers to the NHS, but engaging your suppliers is important – those unable to provide information adhering to the supporting standards will find it increasingly difficult to do business with trusts going forward.
Overall, the eProcurement Strategy will enable a far more professional approach to trading relationships between trusts and suppliers alike.