Several different procurement approaches are being used in healthcare: Private Finance Initiative (PFI), Local Improvement Finance Trusts (LIFT), Community Ventures, ProCure21, Connecting for Health, and the national ISTC procurement.

FHN's work programme for 2006 and 2007 examined:

• The implications of the DH/HM Treasury review of PFI projects for future project planning, and for local health economies with rescoped schemes as a consequence
• Constraints from the funding system for capital: the capital element of the PbR tariff, and how the new capital regime will operate, including the business case approvals process
• Alternative procurement routes for areas where existing routes are not applicable or good VFM, such as the difficulties in making PFI attractive for refurbishment projects. Additionally, where Public-Private Partnerships may have traditionally not been used, eg community hospitals. This will consider for instance Joint Venture models, and radical options such as sale & leasebacks, strategic partnering models, and the 'virtual hospital' concept
• Learning from existing projects around how procurement can be used to address wider investment objectives around regeneration, sustainability, integrated working with social services, and to help encourage innovation in construction and service provision
• Learning from existing projects around project variations and whether these could have been anticipated as part of the procurement and planning process
• The Medical Equipment Forum will examine strategic procurement options for procurement of major kit, both within and outside PFI projects

Please see Information Exchange (Issue 47) for a link to the DH Design Development Protocol for PFI schemes. This updated version responds to the 2006 changes in EU procurement policy. Under News and Updates there is a link to a DH document that summarises ProCure 21's key benefits and PUK Operational Taskforce has started a project to collate information about value testing applied to PFI and PPP projects.

As FHN is now closed, these pages will no longer be updated.