Selling to the NHS in England - how to market and sell your products and services to the Health Service

Selling your products & services to the NHS

Selling to the NHS presents companies with an opportunity in one of the fastest growing sectors of the UK economy. 

The NHS market looks for cost effectiveness whilst improving patient wellbeing and placing a high value on innovation.

So, for building long-term, profitable partnerships with NHS bodies demonstrate how your product or service can overcome challenges. 

Such as IT strategy, health tech, integrated care systems or digital health care, or simply new ways of doing traditional tasks within the healthcare market.

Why take advantage of the opportunity to sell to the NHS?

The UK National Health Service is the world’s fifth largest employer with over 1.5 million members of staff. 

Around 10% of the country’s earnings are spent on it every year through taxation. 

In an average 24hr period, the NHS deals with over 650,000 patients, and the organisation spends over £27bn a year on goods and services.

The procurement process of the NHS follow four purchasing rules:

1. delivery of world-class patient care,
2. delivery of value to the taxpayer,
3. support for health-based innovation (technology- and non-technology based), and
4. economic growth.

The organisation of the NHS

There are four separate NHS services in the UK – NHS Scotland, NHS Wales, HSC Northern Ireland and NHS England.

England current NHS structure is:

• 10 ambulance trusts (including 5 foundation trusts)
• 135 acute trusts
• 15 Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs) and 6 Academic Health Science Centres supporting research, innovation and adoption
• 200+ CCGs (Clinical Commissioning Group)
• 35 community providers
• 54 mental health trusts (including 42 foundation trusts)
• 7,454 GP practices
• 853 for-profit and not-for-profit independent sector organisations, providing care to NHS patients from 7,331 locations

Scotland current NHS structure is:

• 1,000+ GP practices
• 14 Territorial Health Boards supported by 7 ‘Special’ Health Boards
• 300+ hospitals
• 32 Health and Social Care Partnerships (NHS and local authority)

Wales current NHS structure is:

• 100+ hospitals
• 3 Trusts providing pan-Wales services
• 440 GP practices
• 7 local health boards

Northern Ireland current NHS structure is:

• 1 national ambulance service
• 340 GP practices+
• 40 hospitals
• 5 health and social care (HSC) Trusts
• 5 local commissioning groups

Five ways to sell to NHS England

There are five ways of selling to the NHS:

• direct sales to a decision maker within an NHS trust or primary care organisation,
• NHS Supply Chain,
• collaborative purchasing agreements,
• national framework collaborations and contracts, and
• UK government tenders and contracts.

1. Direct to an NHS trust or primary care organisation

An NHS authority or trust (also referred to as a healthcare provider) can make their own purchasing decisions.

So if you choose to take this approach, you need to identify the right contacts within the NHS practice. For example this could be the finance team, procurement team, or the clinicians.

2. The NHS Supply Chain

40% of all NHS spending on capital equipment, high value healthcare consumables, common goods, and everyday hospital consumables is done via the Supply Chain (NHSSC). The goal is to raise that to 80% in the coming years.

So by partnering with these providers, one of the main benefits is that all NHS buyers will have access to your products and services via online catalogues.

3. Collaborative purchasing agreements

More local NHS organisations are partnering to create regional purchasing arrangements.

Four new procurement hubs have evolved from this process and they operate three of the new NHSSC towers –

• rehabilitation, disabled services, women’s health and associated consumables
• orthopaedics, trauma and spine, and ophthalmology, and
• sterile intervention equipment and associated consumables.

4. NHS national framework collaborations and contracts

On occasion, groups of private providers submit collaborative purchasing contracts to NHS organisations and trusts and work carried out under the contract is carried out at a given price.

For SMEs, national framework collaborations can provide greater visibility to NHS buyers as well as aiding in gaining an understanding of how NHS procurement works in general.

5. NHS government tenders and contracts

For orders of suppliers and services worth more than £118,133, NHS organisations issues tenders.

How do you find the right people to approach?

By using our extensive UK public sector database, we can put you in touch with the following leaders and decision makers within the following types of healthcare organisations across the country.

Our NHS supply chain marketing database contains the following contact information:

• 1,081 named contacts,
• 466 organisations across 500 sites,
• 258 direct phone numbers,
• 1,065 main phone numbers from our comprehensive public sector calling list,
• 722 unique direct emails, and
• 291 organisational public sector email addresses.

Our list of NHS consultants contains:

• 51,990 named consultants
• 2,573 sites,
• 237 NHS organisations,
• 51,990 postal addresses,
• 22,874 direct email addresses,
• 16,116 NHS consultant phone numbers, and
• 51,990 switchboard numbers.

On our doctors’ database we have:

• 8,829 general practice records,
• 36,280 GP contact names,
• 6,256 telephone numbers,
• 8,676 direct GP email addresses, and
• 2,229 organisational email addresses.

On our list of care homes, we have the following information:

• 21,437 nursing homes, residential care homes, and rest & retirement homes,
• 9,480 care home emails, and
• 21,003 contact names.

So let us know more about your company, what you want to sell to the NHS, and the benefits your products and services deliver.

Direct marketing to NHS buyers and leaders

Email marketing

One cost-effective way for SMEs to reach NHS buyers is through email marketing. By introducing your product or service to the Health Service using email marketing campaigns offers the lowest cost with the highest average returns.

However, if you lack the technology or know-how within your company to send campaigns to prospective customers we can offer managed email marketing campaigns to the public sector.

Telemarketing

A popular route for SMEs and other companies to build a presence as a supplier within the NHS is telemarketing.

By using our outsourced telemarketing campaigns to the public sector we can identify whether an NHS organisation is

• experiencing a problem which your product or service could solve,
• whether your technology or system would make service delivery smoother, and so on.

By asking a decision maker the right set of questions, we’ll uncover an opportunity for your business to become a new supplier.

Direct mail marketing

Consider using direct mail marketing to find new customers in the NHS for your product or service. 

According to the UK Data and Marketing Association, postal marketing achieves a response rate of 4.4%. In the same survey, the DMA found that companies selling using catalogues achieved a response rate of 4.26%.

Want to buy the NHS data only?

For those clients who wish to conduct their own marketing campaigns we do offer a data only service, which allows clients to select records from our extensive NHS and public sector database. The data is then supplied on a 12 month licence for use.