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South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw's ICS Provider Collaborative has been named among the finalists for the Procurement Project of the Year at the national Health Service Journal Partnership Awards.

Working with Crown Commercial Services (CCS), a collaboration of nine hospital trusts in South Yorkshire, Bassetlaw and Lincolnshire, established a single supplier contract for the procurement of temporary healthcare personnel with the prime group being doctor locums.

A collaborative approach across several Integrated Care System means that traditional boundaries in accessing locum doctor services are now a thing of the past and Trusts are able to challenge locum agencies in a way that hasn’t previously been possible.

Owing to this, the Trusts within the collaborative will see significant cost benefits; including an initial saving of over £1million which is around 6% of the total locum doctor spend in the area.

Ongoing work as part of the collaboration will also see agency fees for doctors in the area fall and will deliver additional annual savings. Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals alone is set to save £42,040 per annum. These savings across the region mean that additional funds are available to be re-invested back into patient care.

Ultimately, the project will mean benefits to patients requiring hospital care in Barnsley, Chesterfield, Doncaster and Bassetlaw, Leeds, Sheffield, Lincolnshire and Rotherham.

Richard Somerset, Head of Procurement at Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals, said: “Our team here at DBTH and our counterparts in all of the organisations involved in this tender are extremely pleased to have been nominated for Procurement Project of the Year. Our intentions are to share this project as an example of best practice in the hope that it can be replicated in other regions in order to preserve valuable NHS resources.”

The results of the awards can be viewed online.