Calls for concerted barcoding drive

With the NHS in England spending some pound 6 billion annually on hospital supplies, but (says the Department of Health) some English hospitals paying nearly three times as much for the same items as their counterparts, Health Minister, Simon Burns, has called on suppliers to significantly extend use of standardised GS1 barcodes in an attempt to improve "transparency" for procurement staff. The Minister argues that individually barcoding many more hospital-bound items would give procurement teams a clearer, more accurate picture of what they were buying, enable fairer price comparison, and radically improve stock control in many NHS hospitals, potentially reducing NHS procurement costs by millions of pounds. Other anticipated benefits include fewer medication errors, lower risk of wrong-site surgery, and the ability to track and trace everything from surgical instruments to patient beds. HEJ editor Jonathan Baillie reports.