The Office of Government Commerce's programme of Procurement Capability Reviews was announced for all Government Departments in January 2007 as a key enabler of the Transforming Government Procurement report.
The review of the Department is being coordinated for the Department by the commercial directorate and the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency. The terms of reference will be agreed in early 2008. The intensive interview stage of the review is scheduled to begin in March 2008 and last three-four weeks. The review team's report on the Department will be published in the autumn.
The Strategic Review of Collaborative Procurement in the national health service is not yet complete. The Department will consult on its findings before making them available to interested parties shortly.
The information is not available centrally in the exact format requested. Expenditure on clinical supplies and services is collected on an historical basis from strategic health authorities (SHAs), primary care trusts (PCTs) and national health service trusts. The latest year for which information is available is 2006-07 when the total expenditure on clinical supplies and services was £5,043,371,000. This figure contains the purchase of low value medical and surgical equipment but not items over £5,000. Information on the expenditure on medical equipment costing more than £5,000 is not available. Information for 2007-08 will be available next autumn.
The information is from the annual financial returns of SHAs, PCTs and NHS trusts. No information is available for NHS foundation trusts.