Streeting announces crackdown on NHS waste

A new strategy is being published to radically cut the number of single-use medical devices in the health service

• Move to scrap single-use MedTech as Health and Social Care Secretary launches waste blitz
• Tens of millions of disposable items are binned after just one use
• MedTech companies incentivised to produce sustainable products – pumping millions back to NHS frontline and cash into economy

The government is launching a major crackdown on waste in the NHS to save millions of pounds a year, helping to divert more resources to frontline care.

A new strategy – the Design for Life Roadmap – is being published to radically cut the number of single-use medical devices in the health service and reduce our reliance on foreign imports.

Disposable medical devices substantially contribute to the 156,000 tonnes of clinical waste that the NHS produces every year in England alone. The roadmap paves the way to slashing this waste and maximising reuse, remanufacture and recycling in the NHS. 

Doing so will create thousands more UK jobs and help transform the country into a life sciences superpower. As it stands, millions of devices like walking aids and surgical instruments are thrown away after just one use.

Harmonic shears – surgical devices which seal patients’ wounds using ultrasound waves – each cost more than £500 and around 90% of them are binned after a single use. Innovative companies are already purchasing these used devices and safely remanufacturing them at a lower price.

The government will encourage more of this kind of innovation to safely remanufacture a wider range of products and drive costs down, including by changing procurement rules to incentivise reusable products and rolling out examples where hospitals are already leading the way on cutting wasteful spending and practices.

Approximately £10 billion each year is spent on medical technology like this in the NHS, but too much of it is imported via vulnerable routes that risk disrupting patient care.  

A Circular Economy Taskforce has already been created to foster more highly skilled green jobs and smarter use of our resources. An economy wide shift to a circular economy could add £75 billion to the economy and create 500,000 jobs by 2030.

Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said: “The NHS is broken. It is the mission of this government to get it back on its feet, and we can’t afford a single penny going to waste.

“Because the NHS deals in the billions, too often it doesn’t think about the millions. That has to change. This government inherited a £22 billion blackhole in the public finances, so we will have a laser-like focus on getting better value for taxpayers’ money.

“Every year, millions of expensive medical devices are chucked in the bin after being used just once. We are going to work closely with our medical technology industry, to eliminate waste and support homegrown medtech and equipment.”

The below case studies illustrate the potential savings:

• Mid Yorkshire Trust uses 330,000 single use tourniquets in a year, but a single reusable tourniquet can be used 10,000 times. In a one-year trial, reusable alternatives saved £20,000 in procurement costs and 0.75 metric tonnes of plastic waste.
• In Northampton Hospitals NHS Trust, a single Ophthalmology department saved 1,000 pairs of disposable scissors and £12,000 in a year by switching to reusable pairs. Single-use scissors are often used in surgical settings. NHS procurement data shows that several million pairs of single-use scissors were purchased by the NHS in a single year (2022-23). That is the equivalent of hundreds of pairs of scissors thrown away every hour.
• Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust saved £76,610 in costs purchasing 604 remanufactured Electrophysiology (EP) Catheters, and generated a further £22,923 for selling used devices for collection. If the same approach were to be scaled up across the UK, the NHS could save millions of pounds per year on EP catheters alone, just a few product lines among hundreds of thousands.
• Harmonic shears are complex devices for performing surgical procedures and cost more than £500 each, yet around 90% are binned after a single use. Leeds University Teaching Hospitals Trust has demonstrated that companies can safely remanufacture them, giving up to 50% cost savings.

The Design for Life programme will reduce this kind of waste and achieve an NHS-wide move to sustainable alternatives– also supporting the government’s net zero goals.

A new roadmap sets out 30 actions to achieve this shift – including how the government will work with companies to encourage the production of more sustainable products, along with training for NHS staff on how to use them.

Taking this approach will mean more money can be spent in the UK, driving growth, creating more engineering, life sciences and research jobs – all while securing savings for the NHS budget.

Many of these products include precious metals such as platinum and titanium which are in high demand but go to landfill when they could be recovered and sold. A reduction in the amount of disposed single-use devices will also reduce the country’s carbon footprint and plastic pollution.

The government will encourage industry figures to innovate by making sure benefits of reusable MedTech are part of how the NHS chooses the products it buys.

Baroness Merron visited University College London Hospital yesterday (Tuesday, 15 October). The hospital is a member of the Circular Economy Healthcare Alliance, which advocates for sustainable practices within the NHS.

Health Minister Baroness Gillian Merron said: “Design for Life doesn’t just deliver on the Health Mission, to build an NHS fit for the future, it also delivers on our Growth Mission to make the UK a life science superpower and our commitment to get the NHS to net zero by 2045.“

She toured a mock operating theatre and was shown various sustainable products its NHS staff use – from simple products like gowns and scissors to sophisticated, expensive products like harmonic shears.

Professor Sir Stephen Powis, National Medical Director of NHS England, said: “While the NHS is treating record numbers of patients, we know there is much more to do to ensure taxpayers get value for money.

“The NHS made a record £7.25bn worth of efficiency savings last year and is targeting a further £9bn of savings for 2024/25. But we are rightly still looking for ways to get our money’s worth for every penny we spend.”