London North West Healthcare selects Genmed
Contract sees Genmed become vendor-neutral managed services partner
Genmed has been selected by London North West Healthcare NHS Trust as its preferred HMRC-compliant vendor-neutral managed services partner.
The appointment was by mini competition under the SBS managed services provider framework and is initially for a three-year period with an option to extend.
London North West Healthcare NHS Trust (LNWH) is one of the largest integrated care trusts in the country, bringing together acute hospital and community services across Brent, Ealing and Harrow.
With an operating budget of £743.6m, it employs 9,500 staff, serves a diverse population of approximately 950,000 people, and is responsible for Central Middlesex, Ealing, St Mark’s and Northwick Park Hospitals.
The Accident & Emergency department at the Northwick Park site is thought to be the largest in Europe.
Vince Pross, LNWH’s associate director of procurement, said: “The trust currently has a small number of services delivered using a managed services contract model, but wishes to expand this considerably to include various priority areas such as endoscopy trust-wide, surgery, anaesthesia, LED lighting, imaging and cardiology, air-conditioning, fire alarm maintenance, and electronic document management.
“Genmed was selected as it is able to support us in all our priority areas.”
Genmed will work in partnership with the trust to manage the procurement process on its behalf in these priority areas.
This will include running mini competitions, selecting suppliers in conjunction with clinical input, and managing the whole delivery, administrative, and invoicing processes.
The costs for these managed services will then be packaged using an umbrella contract and billed monthly or quarterly.
This approach improves cash management as no big upfront investment is required and the costs are ‘smoothed’ over time.
In addition, Genmed’s services are off balance sheet and HMRC compliant for VAT recovery.
This will allow LNWH to reclaim back the VAT so that budget can be saved or money used to fund additional frontline services.
Robin Modak, Genmed’s chief executive, said: “Most managed service providers focus solely on transactions. They’ll just source and supply equipment.
“We are different as our approach is much broader.
“We’re more consultative and will work with trusts like LNWH to not only procure services cost effectively and efficiently, but to fully understand their operational and clinical needs, STP planning goals, and look at how we can therefore add real value with service provision to improve the patient’s pathway and care provided.”
Genmed is vendor neutral and will work with LNWH to select partner firms and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) who will fulfil the trust’s requirements at the right price.
For example, one of LNWH’s areas of focus is electronic document management (EDMS).
Genmed partners with leading records management firms including Restore, the largest UK-owned archive document storage company, which works with more than 40% of all NHS trusts providing records management and scanning services.
In addition, Genmed announced a partnership in February with CCube Solutions to use the managed services approach to cover all costs required to shift from paper to digital medical records so that the heath service meets the Government’s deadline that they should be paperless at the point of care by 2023.
To close a medical library and go paperless typically costs more than £1m. A managed service means a trust can close a library, get rid of the paper and the vans required to deliver them, redeploy people - or reduce headcount - and the cash saved can immediately be used to pay for the service.