Country Perspective: Belgium

What is your professional background and which country insights do you share with us?

CEO of MercurHosp

Belgium

How is procurement in healthcare being organised in your country?

In Belgium, there is no central legislation for the procurement sector in the healthcare sector. The European legislation from 2013 for tenders applies to public and associate hospitals in Belgium.

Since January 2020, a profound reform of the hospital landscape has taken place: the creation of 24 so-called networks, which form a single entity, both medically and administratively, without having to form a legally merged company. However, the governance of the network is centralized.

It is to be expected that purchasing and procurement will be merged at the network level.

Various local and regional initiatives to consolidate procurement (tender, logistics, best practices) have been taking place in Belgium for about 10 years. The complex Belgian state structure (Competence level in the health care sector: regional-national) and the language differences make an overall Belgian structure almost impossible. Especially in the Walloon (French-speaking) area, a consolidation of purchasing is currently taking place.

What are the current/ main challenges you see in procurement?

1. Discussion of the scope of HealthCare procurement:

• stationary
  • Hospital networks
  • Specialized Institutions
  • Rest homes
• itinerant
  • care
  • paramedics
  • 1st line
• integrating
  • existing structures (Federations,…)
  • Wallonia-Brussels – Flandria-Brussels

2. Strategic Challenges

• Cooperation via outsourcing, joint venture, mutualization
• Inside of a network or cooperation between networks
• What?
• Innovation

3. Challenges to discuss

• Professional team
• Key competencies
• Information Systems Needs
• Level of pooling
• Purchasing function
• Logistics and distribution function
• Function appropriate use
• Estimated expected impact
• Degree of feasibility

How will the future of procurement be in the next 5-10 years?

It would be simplistic to analyse the procurement function without taking into account the entire associated value chain…

Improving the purchasing function is the first step in a more global logistics process that integrates the supply and use of the product.

It can and must be consolidated (or even strengthened!) through interventions throughout the value chain.

• Purchase
• Logistics
• Appropriate use

Potential for efficiency:

• Efficient purchasing
  • Supplier Certification
  • Reduction in the number of suppliers
  • Reduction in the number of references
  • Centralized purchasing
  • Price negotiation
• Optimization of the logistics chain
  • Logistics points and stores
  • Just in time/Réactivité
  • Stock levels and positioning criteria
• Appropriate use via logging
  • Protocols of use
  • Revision usage/costs/efficiency
  • Decision support tools
  • Raising awareness among professionals
• Appropriate use via control
  • Controls at distribution points
  • Traceability

Which insight/experience would you like to share most with the European procurement community?

• Possibility of benchmark
• Possibility of joint procurement
• Possibility of conceptional cooperation (logistics, …)