Creating efficiencies and improving safety

Pennine Healthcare, chief executive, Luke Fryer, speaks to The Clinical Services Journal about the rising demand for customised procedure packs and why he believes there is a move back to UK manufacturing in the med-tech sector. 

Procedure packs create efficiencies, reducing procurement activity, with significantly less ordering and administration costs. They also create efficiencies in theatre, enabling healthcare providers to deliver more procedures in less time. Studies have shown that the number of operations performed can be increased by nearly 50% in some instances1 Procedure packs can also reduce the amount of time spent on retrieving and laying out equipment, thereby releasing expensive nursing time for more important activities, while errors are also minimised in product selection.

Some Trusts have reported savings in excess of £100,000 on annual theatre spend,2 while the amount of waste generated has also been found to be reduced. There are also benefits from a patient safety perspective – batch traceability can be simplified by providing all the components in a single pack. Most importantly, the less sterile products are handled, when being laid out in theatre, the lower the risk of contamination.