Updated: the geography of OV procurement

I said in my earlier blogs on OV procurement that one of the problems is dividing up England into geographical "lots" to bid for. Too large and this means that the network of veterinary practices is likely to be too difficult to put together or sustain; too small and it means that practices will have to spread themselves over several different "lots" to sustain their current level of business. This could also be an organisational headache, particularly as AHVLA have suggested that each winning contractor will have to develop their own quality control and management systems.

So what does the current geography look like? To what extent are practices already working across the boundaries of the lots set by AHVLA? Thanks to AHVLA Ive been able to look at this with some new data they've sent me. Take a look at the following graphs. They show the districts that practices in Devon/Somerset/Cornwall currently test in (most of the practices are in Devon by the looks of things). The first is for the actual number of tests, the second is for the %. Ive limited the graphs to those conducting at least 400 tests per year.

Apologies for some of the chart junk: I realise it may be difficult to pick out some of the colours for the different. The point is though if these practices neatly followed the boundaries of the "lots" then they would all be one colour, but they're not. Although some practices have a lot of tests in just one of the districts (like no. 1069, 720 and 93) more have their testing load spread over 3 or more other districts. For practice 91, about 60% of testing comes from one district, the rest from several others.

What this means is that practices will have to be part of several different bids if they want to retain their current level of testing. Of course, if they don't, then that will mean changes to the structure of veterinary practices: some may get bigger and others smaller.

When you look closely at some of the small "lots", you can also see that there is already a lot of competition within them. Taking 3 random "lots", there are 5 practices with over 80% of their testing in 1 lot; 3 practices with over 90% of their testing in another lot; and 5 practices with over 69% of their testing in the last lot. Obviously the actual amount of testing will vary between these practices, but Ive already discounted the very small practices.

This boundary effect is most pronounced in the high incidence areas of TB, where the AHVLA have constructed lots that are relatively small. They've done this because they were seeking to make the lots of relatively equal size (financially). But in these areas, maybe it might be better if these areas weren't so small. Organisationally its likely to be easier to have larger areas, it would mean that one dominant practice couldn't control one area at the expense of others, and there'd be more incentive for practices to work together.

As usual: size matters.