The NHS continues to face challenges but remains committed to providing outstanding patient care. NHS Supply Chain plays a crucial role in the healthcare system, supporting the NHS in delivering a patient-centred service that prioritises community care and preventative health interventions.
Looking ahead to 2025 – 2026, we are excited to continue enhancing our capabilities and services. Through our Business Plan we aim to enhance patient safety, help to embed efficiency across the NHS, evolve our service offer, and contribute to a more integrated and effective healthcare environment.
Together, with our talented team and system partners, we are committed to ensuring the NHS continues to provide high quality care to all patients.
Our strategy and corporate priorities
Through our vision to make it easier for the NHS to put patients first, our strategy remains to buy smart, supply right, partner expertly.
Our 2025 / 2026 corporate priorities are:
Create lasting value for patients
We keep patients at the heart of everything we do to generate value, and support improved outcomes for the healthcare system.
Seek efficient and effective solutions
Our organisation delivers unprecedented efficiencies to the NHS and we are driven to elevate our systems and processes to make them simple, seamless and robust as possible.
Deliver our Service Promise
Using a blend of technologies, logistics and infrastructure, we endeavour to deliver a more resilient and frictionless supply chain to the UK’s healthcare system.
Grow our people, culture and capabilities
We are dedicated to providing the right tools and environment to ensure our people can perform at their best and contribute to our culture and values.
See our Downloads ▼ section to read our full business plan for this year.
Create lasting value for patients
We keep patients at the heart of everything we do by generating value and supporting improved outcomes for the healthcare system. This includes our commitment to providing clinically led, safe, compliant, sustainable and resilient products to healthcare providers.
Through this commitment we will:
- Enhance our clinical leadership
Roll out patient safety training and examine our role in population health. - Support the carbon objectives of the NHS
Make carbon emission reduction a key requirement and performance metric in the new logistics contract for our outsourced provider, whilst optimising stock flow through our warehouses.
- Embed safety across our supply chain
Ensure all new pre-tender frameworks follow a standardised and comprehensive assessment. - Deliver resilience to the NHS
Continue to progress towards the modernisation of our systems; strengthen our cyber resilience; develop a plan that ensures compliance with future regulations and Medical Device Regulation (MDR).
Through these efforts, the impact to our customers will be:
- Supported by a supply chain that understands and responds to clinical requirements.
- Supported with local population health priorities contained in Integrated Care Partnership Joint Forward Plans.
- Patient health equity and outcomes considered across all new frameworks, providing improved clinical outcomes and patient experience.
- Increased contribution to trust sustainability plans.
- Delivery of safe and compliant products to reduce activity being duplicated locally.
Seek efficient solutions
Our organisation delivers efficiencies to the NHS and we aim to upkeep this by elevating our systems and processes to make them as simple and seamless as possible.
During 2025 / 2026 we will:
- Strengthen our commercial capabilities
Refresh our commercial strategy to ensure we maximise our potential to contribute to NHS Cost Improvement Plans, and deliver value beyond product price. - Modernise our supply chain and IT
Develop the roadmap to transform our operational IT systems, whilst making changes to improve the resilience of our legacy platforms.
- Work efficiently with the NHS
Pilot our minimal viable product digital platform with five trusts, and test product search, browse and purchase control capabilities (non-ordering) with 25 trusts; and continue to roll out the national inventory management and point of care solutions subject to funding. - Simplify how we trade
Scope order management requirements with NHS trusts, deploy a new planning capability, and embed effective ways of working
As a result our customers will benefit from:
- Delivery of savings and efficiencies to healthcare providers.
- Accurate and timely product information.
- Improved ordering and digital capabilities that provide future enablement of our service offer which is aligned to NHS requirements.
- Enhanced savings, resilience and patient safety through the national Inventory Management System (IMS) rollout.
- Simpler approach to pricing and margin with greater accuracy.
- Greater confidence that stock holding meets NHS requirements.
Deliver our Service Promise
Using a blend of technologies, logistics and infrastructure, we endeavour to deliver a more resilient and frictionless supply chain to the UK’s healthcare system.
To achieve this we will:
- Enhance our stocked delivery channel
Optimise and enhance service delivery out of Gorsey Point. - Reprocure our logistics and IT provider contracts
Using a blend of technologies, logistics and infrastructure, we endeavour to deliver a more resilient and frictionless supply chain to the UK’s healthcare system.
- Improve how we manage and use data to simplify and strengthen
Develop a data and analytics strategy, and undertake work to simplify and unify our master data model. - Ensure procurement act compliance
Ensure adherence to the Procurement Act 2023 so that the best procurement techniques are deployed for the NHS.
The benefits to our customers will be:
- Operational and IT challenges faced by providers served from Gorsey Point are addressed.
- A logistics service that can evolve to meet future provider requirements and deliver greater efficiencies across the system.
- Faster delivery of improvements (linked to improved data and end-to-end value provision).
- Better insights through improved data and single version of the truth.
- Reduced risk of service outage.
- Delivery of compliant procurement policies.
Grow our people culture and capabilities
People are at the heart of our organisation and ensuring the right culture, skills and engagement will be key to delivering this business plan and our longer-term strategy. We are dedicated to providing the right tools and environment to ensure our people can perform at their best and contribute to our culture and values, and succeed as the organisation continues to change and evolve.
To ensure this, we will:
- Deliver an optimal environment for our teams
Implement our estates strategy to establish the right physical spaces that foster collaboration, and enable our people to deliver effectively for the NHS. - Strengthen our personal leadership
Strengthen our personal leadership capabilities, at all levels, so we are equipped with the skills to drive our transformation forward, and implement change.
- Deliver our strategic workforce plan
Undertake an assessment of workforce skills and capability requirements to ensure we are well positioned to deliver more value to NHS trusts. - Raise the bar on performance
Improve our approach to performance management and individual goal setting to ensure our strategy and business plan is part of our DNA, underpinned by values and behaviours rooted in continuous improvement for the NHS.
For our colleagues, this will mean a more supportive environment where they can thrive and are included, enabling them to succeed.
