The archaic tendering procedures used to buy medicine are being revamped to have a process that should eliminate the shortage problem and cut costs for consumers.

We’re now embarking on a new process of procurement that will get our medications faster and cheaper

Health Minister Joe Cassar said that, over the past years, the ministry recognised that one of the major problems it had was the way it was procuring medications, medical devices and equipment.

“This was being done through very archaic tendering processes that were taking forever. Part of the out-of-stock problem was also a result of outdated systems,” he said.

The Health Department is the first within the government system to issue an e-tender. This meant, Dr Cassar said, that “we’re now embarking on a new process of procurement that will get our medications faster and cheaper”.

It would be faster, he explained, because the department would be using IT as the backbone of how people tender. It would also be cheaper because the process itself would “exponentially increase” competition between those tendering, in turn pushing prices downwards.

With the previous system, the health authorities had to project the quantity needed and over what time and to do this sound data and a good IT system were necessary. The IT system has just been implemented.

“The old system was also not opening up the competition we were seeking... Automatically, once competition is increased, the price goes down,” Dr Cassar said, insisting the system would be transparent.

The pitfalls of the previous procurement system had come under the spotlight last year by the Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry and the Labour Party that blamed it for medicine shortages, among others.

Last year, the chamber had drawn attention to the problem and said an endless list of tenders had been cancelled by the Department of Contracts, mostly because of minor technicalities arising from “conflicting, contradictory and unworkable conditions on the tender document”.

Karl Farrugia, CEO of procurement and supplies within the ministry, said his unit was set up five months ago and had immediately embarked on studying the process to highlight the problems and establish how to cut costs and increase competition.The unit, which consulted key players in the field, including the chamber, studied the tender conditions and eliminated those that were problematic to meet and, in turn, led the tender to fall through.

Over the next weeks, business intelligent and data warehousing systems will be set up to collect the information from every health entity to be able to extract a forecast of stock shortage so this will be replenished as soon as possible.