Are you or any of your family still in possession of a piece of NHS equipment that you or they no longer require?
If so we’d like to make a polite request – can we please have it back so it can be used to help someone else?
We understand that some patients need to keep hold of NHS equipment over a long period, but NHS services lose a small fortune each year due to missing equipment.
The equipment we are keen to recover ranges from alternating air mattresses, which cost £1,650 each, to wheeled adjustable frames, which cost £12.70 each. In one month alone last year nearly £8,500 worth of wheeled adjustable frames and nearly £600,000 worth of air mattresses were issued by Suffolk NHS services.
How can you help?
The NHS and the county council have been working in partnership with our NHS equipment suppliers Medequip to ensure as many ‘surplus to requirement’ items can be returned as easily as possible.
Whatever the equipment is, or whatever condition it might be in, it can be assessed and safety-tested before either being repaired and reused or alternatively, stripped down to be recycled.
This call for equipment to be returned is a Suffolk-wide partnership initiative involving West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust, the NHS Ipswich and East Suffolk and NHS West Suffolk Clinical Commissioning Groups, Suffolk Community Healthcare, Norfolk Community Health and Care NHS Trust and Suffolk County Council.
Call Medequip on 01473-351805 or email Suffolk@medequip-uk.com to arrange for them to come and collect it from you.
