St Vincent’s Health Australia is the nation’s largest Catholic not-for-profit health and aged care provider. Our services comprise 27 facilities along the east coast of Australia including six public hospitals, eight private hospitals, 13 aged care facilities and four co-located research institutes (Victor Chang Cardiac Institute, Garvan Institute of Medical Research, O’Brien Institute, and St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research).

St Vincent’s Health Australia operates more than 2,500 hospital beds, 1,100 aged care places, employs over 16,000 staff, works with over 2,500 medical practitioners and draws on the talents of over 1,300 generous volunteers. Each year we provide care to more than 250,000 inpatients and over a million episodes of ambulatory care through our outpatient services.

The Group Procurement Service (GPS) delivers a range of high level Supply Chain services to individual facilities within St Vincent’s Health Australia (SVHA).

The service strives to provide reliable, timely and effective Procurement and Contract Management systems, services and support to its clients, SVHA facilities, entities and the associated activities of the SVHA Group.

The provision of Procurement and Contract Management systems and services are performed by the open and direct involvement of all Group Procurement Services Team acting as a unified and supportive team in line with the core values of SVHA, under the stewardship of Mary Aikenhead Ministries. In this performance, we continue to focus on the provision of superior customer service, quality and work performance in pursuit of operational, financial and ethical values and objectives.

SVHA’s Group Procurement Services team is responsible for selecting and appointing suppliers of all commodities and services used by the group.

Only those suppliers who can meet our standards are appointed. These standards are continuously being developed to ensure that our suppliers:

* supply brands that are leaders in their markets
* have rigorous quality assurance systems
* meet all health standards requirements
* maintain a timely and efficient distribution system
* maintain R&D, marketing and merchandising programs
* develop new products and services
* have financial integrity and stability
* follow codes of ethical practice, and
* have the capacity to provide high quality data analysis.

While we prefer to develop longer-term partnerships with our suppliers, alternative sources of supply are continually assessed.