A recent report led by the NHS Counter Fraud Authority (NHSCFA) on local NHS healthcare spend during the COVID-19 pandemic has identified that good practice across NHS procurement saved millions of pounds during this unprecedented and challenging time.
The PEA (Post Event Assurance) exercise found that despite the mounting, varied and complex operational pressures, most NHS organisations maintained good levels of financial governance, assurance, transparency, and fraud risk management.
The unique nature of the pandemic and the subsequent need for an immediate response put pressure on procurement practices and it was therefore important to capture behaviours locally.
The project also looked for instances of fraud and assessed fraud risk management practices during the emergency management response. The NHSCFA is aware that during extreme times fraudsters see these as opportunities and therefore the exercise focused on contracts awarded under extreme urgency, supplier relief payments and high-risk suppliers.
An impressive 91 per cent response rate was achieved comprising 210 NHS provider organisation from England and Wales. The NHSCFA collaborated closely with colleagues from the Cabinet Office, NHS England and its Welsh counterparts on the exercise.
Richard Hampton, Head of Intelligence and Fraud Prevention said: “We also identified proactive action, taken locally by NHS organisations, that avoided known fraud risks when they urgently needed to take on new suppliers.
“The impact was evaluated where supplier contracts, either in the process of being adopted, or under active consideration, were cancelled and/or payments clawed back due to an identified risk, following information/intelligence received, or due diligence undertaken against the supplier. In this respect, NHSCFA identified £10m of savings that otherwise would have been lost to the NHS”.
The NHSCFA will continue to lead the fight against fraud and will work collaboratively in providing organisation-specific feedback to NHS provider organisations to inspire continuous improvement across the NHS procurement sector. NHS organisations should continue to implement, enforce, and review the appropriateness of their fraud risk management regime under both business-as-usual and emergency management scenario circumstances to future-proof their strategies.
The NHS has endured a challenging time in coping with the COVID-19 pandemic. Now is a time for the sector to reflect on the effectiveness of their fraud risk management regime and to look at how these can be continually developed and improved across the sector.
