The government is launching a major crackdown on waste in the NHS to save millions of pounds a year
Tens of millions of disposable items are binned after just one use they say with disposable medical devices substantially contributing to the 156,000 tonnes of clinical waste that the NHS produces every year in England alone.
Harmonic shears – surgical devices which seal patients’ wounds using ultrasound waves – each cost more than £500 and around 90% of them are binned after a single use. Innovative companies are already purchasing these used devices and safely remanufacturing them at a lower price.
The government will encourage more of this kind of innovation to safely remanufacture a wider range of products and drive costs down, including by changing procurement rules to incentivise reusable products and rolling out examples where hospitals are already leading the way on cutting wasteful spending and practices.
Approximately £10 billion each year is spent on medical technology like this in the NHS, but too much of it is imported via vulnerable routes that risk disrupting patient care.
A Circular Economy Taskforce has already been created to foster more highly skilled green jobs and smarter use of our resources. An economy wide shift to a circular economy could add £75 billion to the economy and create 500,000 jobs by 2030.
Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said:
The NHS is broken. It is the mission of this government to get it back on its feet, and we can’t afford a single penny going to waste.
Because the NHS deals in the billions, too often it doesn’t think about the millions. That has to change. This government inherited a £22 billion blackhole in the public finances, so we will have a laser-like focus on getting better value for taxpayers’ money.
Every year, millions of expensive medical devices are chucked in the bin after being used just once. We are going to work closely with our medical technology industry, to eliminate waste and support homegrown medtech and equipment.
