Back in Autumn 2024, Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced her first budget. Measures announced included raising the tax on employing people through changes to Employer’s National Insurance contributions and providing an inflation-beating 6.7% increase in the National Minimum Wage.
Providers such as Medequip operate under contractual terms which allow for some increases in the charge we make for our services, in line with RPI inflation rates and equipment cost price changes. However, they do not by default allow us any recourse to claim additional contract funding for unpredictable and unavoidable increases to operating costs above RPI.
Given this situation, we began a multi-channel campaign to lobby our MPs and Government, working with the British Healthcare Trades Association (BHTA) and National Association of Equipment Providers (NAEP) plus Providers Unite which gave voice to smaller organisations also impacted by these costs.
The Government suggested that some additional funding had been provided to both local government and the NHS to offset these costs, but this was not funding that we could automatically access as a contract provider.
We then wrote to each one of our customers highlighting the issue, firstly in broad terms and then providing specific details of the impact cost for their service. We requested that they consider exceptional additional funding, whilst suggesting overall cost mitigations through use of alternative equipment, scheduling efficiencies and even greater recycling efforts to increase Medequip’s 90% of collected equipment in 2024 recycled rate further.
Meetings to discuss, validate and agree details followed. To date, agreements have been finalised with half our customers, which combine cost savings with some additional funding contributions.
Negotiations are continuing with our other customers. We are finding that the joint commitment to work through this challenge and achieve a suitable outcome is a testament to the partnership working applied daily to ensure that services for the people that need them are continued and fulfilled at the exceptional level we consistently aim to achieve.