[Gavin78]

I think in terms of "approved suppliers" it's more to do with insurance costs e.g. who is going to be using that piece of equipment and is it safe to use.

I can only assume perhaps extra checks are done on the equipment by the supplier or they are more liable in the event something happens while in use I'm not sure.

all I know is we have a cataluge for ordering stock and has to be use for buying equipment.

But here is some red tape. We had a patient that was of obese size they needed a bariatric bed and we only have the standard size beds you'll have all seen when staying in the NHS. he was well within the weight of these beds but their overall size was too big for the standard bed.

So because we didnt know how long we were having this patient they had to hire an extra large bed. The cost per week was £1500 out of our ward budget or the bed was £4000 to buy.

We had to wait 2 weeks for the Back care advisor to come and look at the bed do a report on it. wait for the report to come back send the report off to the Matron along with costs per year hire vs buying wait for the Matron to look at the report, then she had to send off the report with her findings to the board of directors that over see our wards. once they had approved it all it then had to go to a finance director who approves budgets to be spent out of ward funds.

This all took 6 months, they finally got approval to buy the bed and got a discount and paid £3500.

So to rent the bed I think worked out at about 35k plus 3.5k to buy. the patient 3 weeks later got really unwell to the point they couldn't cope with the treatment we were giving and finally moved off the ward to more intensive care and the bed we paid has been in storage ever since off site.

As the ward they went to have the beds for people their size so didn't need ours