A Transformational Moment for NHS Procurement
The landscape of NHS procurement is changing. With the Procurement Act 2023 now introduced, NHS buyers are being asked to do more than just ensure compliance. The expectations now include delivering better value, increasing transparency, and placing patient outcomes at the heart of every contract.
Digital transformation is a key driver of this new NHS procurement approach, enabling organizations to leverage technology for greater efficiency and collaboration.
This moment marks a turning point. NHS procurement is evolving from a transactional function to a strategic enabler of innovation and public value. The Procurement Act 2023 encourages NHS procurement teams to adopt an innovative way of working, embracing new strategies and processes. Technological innovations are central to the evolving procurement landscape, helping to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and advance organizational value. Whether you’re leading procurement in a Trust, managing finance across a region, or supplying innovative health tech, understanding these changes is crucial.
Want to align your NHS procurement strategy with the Procurement Act 2023? Book a demo with Delta’.
Understanding the Procurement Act 2023 in the Healthcare Context
The Procurement Act 2023 replaces several EU-derived rules with a simplified, principles-based regime that prioritises flexibility, transparency, and outcomes. As a major reform in UK public procurement, it aims to drive innovation, achieve better value for taxpayers, and support economic growth. For NHS bodies, this marks a critical shift in both mindset and methodology. Here are four key implications to understand:
- Competitive Flexible Procedure: The Act introduces this as the new default procurement route, empowering NHS buyers and contracting authorities to design procurement processes that align closely with specific clinical, regional, or operational requirements. Contracting authorities now have more flexibility in designing procurement processes, removing the rigidity of former procedures and enabling more agile approaches to market engagement.
- Pre-procurement Engagement: NHS procurement teams are now encouraged to engage early with suppliers, patients, clinicians, and other stakeholders. This not only supports better specification development but also opens doors to innovative solutions that may not surface under traditional frameworks.
- Transparency Obligations: A more structured and expanded publication regime means NHS bodies must provide visibility across the entire procurement lifecycle—from pipeline planning and contract opportunities to award decisions and contract performance. This reinforces accountability and supports public trust.
- Social Value: No longer a “nice to have,” social value is embedded as a central pillar of procurement strategy. NHS buyers are expected to design contracts that deliver wider societal, environmental, and economic benefits, reflecting NHS England’s broader objectives around equity and sustainability.
Together, these reforms are designed to remove friction from the process, stimulate innovation, and ensure procurement decisions are firmly aligned with patient-centric and community-focused outcomes. Every organisation involved in NHS procurement must adapt to these new principles.
🔗 Explore the full Procurement Act 2023 overview
NHS Procurement Process Redefined – Engagement, Flexibility, and Accountability
One of the most profound shifts under the new rules is the role of early engagement. NHS organisations are now encouraged not only to comply but to lead with curiosity and collaboration. This includes:
- Engage suppliers before procurement begins, creating a space to explore alternative models, uncover innovation, and co-create better specifications. This can lead to smarter scoping, improved market readiness, and ultimately better contract delivery.
- Incorporate stakeholder and patient input when designing services, ensuring that procurement decisions reflect the realities on the ground. Engaging clinicians, service users, and community partners helps align procurement outcomes with care quality, equity, and population health priorities.
- Publish Transparency Notices to improve oversight and demonstrate value. These notices don’t just meet compliance requirements—they give the public and market stakeholders visibility into planned activity, helping to foster accountability and encourage competition. Transparency Notices also enhance process transparency by making procurement procedures and decision-making more open and clear for all suppliers.
The new flexibility is not a free-for-all—it introduces a new standard of proactive governance. NHS buyers must document their reasoning at every stage, from early engagement through to award, ensuring that all procurement activity is clearly recorded and justified. However, this structured flexibility offers a powerful opportunity to tailor processes to the needs of the population and the market, driving better outcomes and smarter spending.
NHS procurement operations are also being optimized through new technologies, improved supplier selection, and enhanced training, supporting more effective and innovative procurement under the new rules.
🔗 See how Delta supports the eProcurement process
Patient-Focused and Value-Based Healthcare Procurement
Procurement should support what matters most: better patient outcomes. The Procurement Act 2023 explicitly enables NHS organisations to shift away from traditional cost-centric procurement models and instead focus on long-term value and public health impact. Key developments include:
- Contracts focused on prevention, outcomes, and innovation rather than inputs. This allows buyers to prioritise service models that reduce hospital admissions, support self-management, or improve care continuity—especially important in community, mental health, and primary care settings.
- Post-award tracking to ensure suppliers deliver what was promised. With new obligations to publish contract performance data, NHS bodies can monitor whether key deliverables are met and take corrective action where necessary. As part of contract management, assessing suppliers’ financial standing is now a key step to ensure they have the capacity and stability to deliver on commitments. This fosters accountability and continuous improvement.
- Feedback loops to learn from delivery and inform future procurements. Performance insights, patient feedback, and clinical outcomes are now integral to shaping future strategies, helping the NHS become a more intelligent, adaptive purchaser.
For example, an NHS Trust procuring community health services can now include metrics for patient engagement, equity of access, or long-term health outcomes in their scoring criteria—shifting the focus from cheapest bids to awarding contracts to the most advantageous tender. NHS buyers seek best value by considering not only price but also innovation, efficiency, and public benefit, and may use advantageous tender criteria to select offers that align with strategic priorities and deliver sustainable, patient-centred value.
Driving Innovation in NHS Procurement
Innovation is no longer a nice-to-have; it’s a strategic requirement baked into the ethos of the Procurement Act 2023. NHS procurement and supply teams are now expected to not only seek but actively enable innovative approaches to care delivery and service improvement, with innovations and new technologies transforming NHS procurement. The Act empowers them to:
- Use the flexible procedure to co-develop solutions with SMEs, MedTech firms, companies, and businesses. Technology and big data are increasingly leveraged to shape contracts that allow for collaboration, prototyping, and scaling wit*Discover how to use in*novation to meet NHS procurement goals – Download our strategy toolkit. therapeutics startup to pilot a new intervention before formal rollout.
- Set innovation-friendly award criteria, ensuring that forward-thinking solutions, innovative ideas, and innovative goods aren’t penalised in evaluation processes that traditionally favoured low-cost incumbents. Procurement experts and procurement professionals play a key role in evaluating these solutions. By rewarding quality, novelty, and patient impact, NHS buyers can create a more dynamic and progressive supplier landscape.
- Support pilot programmes that can scale if successful, enabling NHS organisations to test new models in real-world settings. Supporting supply chain improvements and reducing waste are important outcomes. The Procurement Act provides a more flexible legal basis for these arrangements, helping buyers to de-risk adoption of emerging technologies or integrated service models.
NHS procurement and supply teams are focusing on cost reduction and leveraging expertise to achieve better results.
This is especially relevant for digital health, AI, diagnostics, remote monitoring, and integrated care platforms—areas where early collaboration with suppliers, companies, and businesses unlocks better outcomes and helps the NHS achieve its innovation goals and keep pace with clinical and technological innovation.
Digital Procurement Tools for NHS Buyers
To meet the Act’s expanded transparency and reporting requirements, relying on manual systems simply won’t suffice. NHS buyers are now expected to demonstrate end-to-end visibility, consistency, and responsiveness throughout the procurement lifecycle. This requires digital tools that can:
- Automate notice publication to platforms like Find a Tender, Contracts Finder, and the Official Journal of the EU, ensuring compliance and efficiency.
- Centralise supplier communications, evaluations, and decision trails in one secure portal—minimising risk, reducing admin burden, and improving auditability.
- Visualise progress through compliance dashboards, offering real-time insights into procurement stages, outstanding tasks, and risk flags. Procurement data captured in these dashboards is essential for informing decision-making and increasing transparency across the procurement process.
- Standardise processes using pre-built templates and workflows aligned to the Procurement Act’s new procedures, making it easier for teams to stay consistent and avoid missteps.
Delta’s healthcare solution offers all of this—through an intuitive, modular platform designed for the specific needs of public sector buyers. Procurement departments benefit from these digital tools by gaining the ability to make more strategic, sustainable, and innovative purchasing decisions. From notice publication to post-award reporting, every feature is built to support compliance, transparency, and better procurement outcomes delivered by effective digital procurement solutions.
How Delta eSourcing Helps NHS Buyers Comply and Innovate
Delta supports NHS organisations through every phase of the procurement lifecycle, helping buyers navigate complex regulations while unlocking strategic value. NHS buyers are fully supported by Delta’s platform, with resources and tools designed to ensure successful adoption and delivery of procurement reforms:
- Tender Management with built-in transparency controls, audit trails, and workflow templates aligned to the Procurement Act 2023. This ensures every step is compliant, documentable, and efficient.
- Supplier Engagement Tools that facilitate early market engagement, support soft market testing, and enable structured pre-procurement dialogue with suppliers — all critical for uncovering innovation and improving specification development.
- Social Value Tracking capabilities that allow buyers to embed and monitor social, economic, and environmental goals within their contracts. This helps ensure that NHS procurements deliver community impact as well as clinical benefit.
- Collaboration Workspaces that keep procurement, finance, clinical, and legal teams aligned within a single, secure environment. These workspaces improve communication, reduce duplication, and create a transparent shared record of decision-making.
With a configurable platform tailored for public sector healthcare, Delta empowers NHS buyers to confidently meet their compliance obligations while driving better outcomes for patients, providers, and the public.
Ready to modernise your NHS procurement strategy? Contact us or book a demo.
FAQs: NHS Procurement & the Procurement Act 2023
What is the Procurement Act 2023’s impact on NHS procurement?
It introduces more flexibility, stronger transparency, and a focus on patient outcomes.
What is market engagement in the NHS procurement process?
Engaging suppliers early to shape requirements, identify innovation, and increase competition.
How does the Act encourage innovation in healthcare procurement?
Through flexible procedures that support co-development, pilot schemes, and SME participation.
What role does social value play in NHS contracting in 2025?
It’s now a core consideration in award decisions, enabling contracts to support wider community and environmental goals.
How can Delta eSourcing help NHS buyers comply with the Act?
Delta’s tools support transparency notices, supplier engagement, outcome tracking, and more — all within a compliant, secure platform.