Spend Comparison Service (includes Purchase Order Collection and the Purchase Order Validation Collection)

The Spend Comparison Service provides benchmarking and spend analytics on purchase order data from across all of NHS England’s providers including acute hospital, ambulance and mental health trusts.

Page contents

The data gathered from the collections will be processed and displayed via analytics dashboards. The data is available to a variety of NHS procurement, finance and clinical users.

The analytical information will more effectively enable NHS Improvement to help providers reduce cost and improve the quality of their services.

The Spend Comparison Service will:

inform strategic programmes led by Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT), NHS Improvement and NHS Supply Chain
inform NHS national aggregation initiatives such as Nationally Contracted Products
help providers maximise their use of resources and become more efficient, as required by the provider licence
help identify the relationship between patient characteristics and cost
support an approach to benchmarking for regulatory purposes

Background to the service

The Spend Comparison service, launched on 1 August 2019, replaces NHS Improvement’s Purchase Price Index and Benchmarking service (PPIB).

The PPIB tool was the first national data set of all provider purchase order data. It has been a huge success with more than 113 million purchase order lines uploaded from 245 different organisations across all provider sectors, enabling the comparison of £14 billion of NHS expenditure.

Since its initial release, the PPIB has informed provider's daily purchasing decisions and contract negotiations. Further, it provides a source of intelligence:

for regional cost saving plans
for GIRFT
when implementing a new operating model for the NHS procurement and supply chain management

All trusts are now required to upload their procurement data each month to NHS Digital Strategic Data Collections Service (SDCS).

The service is comprised of two data collections

Purchase Order

This is data from trust purchasing systems. It describes purchase orders for goods and services, including item name and description, volumes, cost, and supplier information.

Purchase Order Validation

Purchase order data sometimes does not reflect the actual price paid for the goods or services where adjustments and suppression need to be made to account for rebates, bulk purchases, bundled deals and research considerations. The Purchase Order Validation collection enables feedback of these adjustments and suppressions at a purchase order line or product code level.

The collection schedule

The window for data submission for the Purchase Order collection falls within the first two weeks of each calendar month. Trusts must submit the previous months data during the two-week window.

Submitted data is processed towards the end of each calendar month and will be made available for analysis via the dashboards no later than the 1 of the following month.

Launch and submissions dates

Period	Launch date	Deadline date
June 2019	3 July 2019	17 July 2019
July 2019	1 August 2019	15 August 2019
August 2019	2 September 2019	16 September 2019
September 2019	1 October 2019	15 October 2019
October 2019	1 November 2019	15 November 2019
November 2019	2 December 2019	16 December 2019
December 2019	2 January 2020	16 January 2020

If the submission window is missed for any reason, then an extension can be granted on request.

The Purchase Order Validation collection will be permanently open and will allow trusts to supply adjustments to previously submitted purchase order data at any time.

Training and guidance

Below is a list of planned Spend Comparison Service training events.

For those training events organised by procurement hubs for their members, please contact the hub directly to book.

For NHSI Organised events please email nhsi.procprogramme@nhs.net stating which event you wish to attend and the name of delegate.

More training events and webinars are planned, and we will update this list as these are scheduled.

Region	Location	Address	Date
North - NHSI Organised	Newcastle	Angel Room, Waterfront 4, Goldcrest Way, Newburn Riverside, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE15 8NY	2 October 2019
South - NHSI Organised	Taunton	South West House, Blackbrook Park, Avenue, Taunton, TA1 2PX	8 October 2019
Midlands and East - NHSI Organised	Birmingham	St Chads Court, 213 Hagley Road, Birmingham. B16 9RG	16 October 2019
North - NoECPE organised	Sheffield	The Source Academy, Meadowhall, 300 Meadowhall Way, Sheffield, S9 1EA	24 October 2019

For data submission guidance go to the Strategic Data Collection Service webpage.

The use of the Spend Comparison Service is governed by the terms and conditions highlighted in the End User Access Agreement (EUAA).

Contact us

For further information or support please contact our NHS National Service Desk.

Email: ssd.nationalservicedesk@nhs.net

Telephone: 0300 303 5035

Last edited: 29 September 2019 7:12 am