Hospitals are wasting £5m a year each on rubber gloves, says NHS

NHS hospitals are wasting more than £5 million a year each on rubber gloves, a report reveals.

Health chiefs could pay for nearly 900 knee replacements or 800 hip replacements with the money some trusts spend procuring the needlessly expensive items, the document says.

The report by NHS Improvement, which oversees hospitals in England, found huge variations in the price that different trusts pay for the same equipment. While boxes of 100 rubber examination gloves are available from 65p, some hospital bosses are paying up to £1.84. Nearly seven million gloves are used by hospitals each year.

The report also found that the NHS could free up £3.7million if hospitals paid the minimum for some syringes, prices of which vary from £323 to £553 for a pack of 50. The money could pay for 28 new ambulances or 74 rapid response vehicles, NHS Improvement said. However, the organisation added that £288million had been saved by better procurement over the last financial year, thanks partly to software enabling managers to see what deals other hospitals are getting on equipment.

This includes £106,000 saved on lavatory rolls after 184 trusts joined together to buy them from a single supplier, and £824,000 saved in larger, wider couch rolls after 227 trusts teamed together. The efficiency drive follows years of funding increases for the NHS being outstripped by growing patient demand.

Steve Barclay, a health minister, said: “As part of putting an extra £20 billion a year into the NHS, it’s more important than ever that we ensure money is effectively spent. Just as retail customers often use price comparison sites, we are using similar principles within the NHS to identify where trusts are paying more than others and using comparative data to drive down procurement costs.”

The progress is thanks to trusts now being able to compare how much their neighbours have paid for commonly purchased items so they can negotiate the best deals with suppliers, as well as clubbing together on some orders and buying in bulk. NHS Improvement oversees a price comparison tool that allows trusts to view the most expensive and cheapest options for more than a million products.

One trust has saved £150,000 in the first month of using the tool, after seeing that others were paying less for exactly the same product – implanted cardiac defibrillators.