Laxatives And Printer Paper: How Inflation Is Hitting England’s Hospitals

High energy prices, supply chain problems, scarcity and post-Brexit customs arrangements continue to drive a cost-of-living crisis in the U.K.

Businesses and consumers are feeling the strain as costs for staple goods like food and fuel rise. Public organisations are no different, with new research showing healthcare trusts spent millions more on common products last year as prices soared.

Public hospitals in England spent nearly £14m more on a range of products in the last quarter of 2022 compared to the same period in 2021, research from hospital procurement experts AdviseInc and industry publication HSJ shows.

Although prices for some goods decreased over this period, prices rose overall by 3.5% compared to the year before.

The biggest price hike of all was for printer and copier paper, which rose by nearly 50%.

Products like hand towels and laxatives also saw relatively steep growth with price increases of 13% and 9% respectively.

But some products fell sharply in price, with various orthopaedic implants — hip replacements, knee replacements and spinal implants — seeing drops in the region of 10% to 15%.

The analysis didn’t cover every single category of product purchased by hospitals. Researchers instead looked only at products which they could directly compare with previous sales.

In total, they found £410m worth of products where prices had shifted up or down during the period in question. With that average increase of 3.5%, hospitals appear to have fared relatively well compared to wider inflation rates. In January, U.K. inflation stood at 8.8%, according to the country’s Office for National Statistics.

This comparatively moderate price growth may be partly down to product “rationalisation” efforts, HSJ reports. This is where hospital procurement teams and other large healthcare buyers narrow down the number of different products they buy. By ordering a smaller range of goods in higher volumes, they may be able to secure better deals.

But goods like these aren’t the only way hospitals are feeling inflationary pressure. The growing cost of building projects is a major concern for numerous hospital trusts, who may have to pare down plans to prevent costs from spiraling out of control.

Take Bedfordshire Hospitals Foundation Trust, which runs two hospitals in the south east of England. Both are part-way through major renovations that will expand their emergency department and increase ward space.

According to the organisation’s latest board papers, inflation creates risks at every step of a project’s journey, from it “being scoped, designed, procured and constructed.”

This puts extra pressure on teams to deliver new buildings quickly as “time to design and plan is constricted,” the papers say.

And of course, inflation is one of the driving factors behind a wave of staff strikes that have seen nurses, ambulance staff and physiotherapists walk out. Union leaders argue that existing below-inflation pay deals are effectively real-terms pay cuts that not only leave workers struggling to get by but make healthcare jobs unattractive.

Without decent pay, unions argue its hard for hospitals to attract and retain staff, particularly when they are working in highly pressurised environments.