Page 71 - BHTA 100 years

An early BHTA exhibition stand.
It included a secure area for the NHS to access members tendering to NHS Purchasing and Supplies Agency (PASA).
The Orthotics Section published a report that suggested that the UK orthotics industry was ‘near breaking point’. It said that many companies were operating at a loss or on very small margins and that there was a real danger that a
number of them would go out of business.
In response, BHTA produced a set of proposals aimed at enabling the industry to return to pro tability. The proposals were sent to the Health Minister and the NHS PASA Chairman. The Chief Executive of NHS Purchasing & Supply Agency (PASA), Duncan Eaton, sent a response and BHTA was encouraged to see a number of developments including that a move to long term contracts was being encouraged which would help stability in the industry.
At the end of the year, the rst ever ‘Lifetime Service Award’ which would be changed to the ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ in the future, was presented to David Hull of Sunrise Medical. David was Technical Director at Sunrise and responsible for product development and design and had presided over a number of product launches over the years.
Memories from...
“Ray Hodgkinson
We spent some time with the
Board and advisors putting together a whole set of governance rules for the Association which made a big difference going forward.
Doing that introduced much better succession planning in the Sections. There was no real regular contact
with the politicians at that time. It
had dropped off over the years and
it was quite dif cult to recover some of that as there had been change”s in governments and civil servants.
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