Every year in the UK, the NHS loses around £300 million to wasted medicines. That figure does not account for other consumables, devices, or supplies that reach their expiry date before they are ever used. Last year in East Lothian, six tonnes of medicine waste with an estimated cost to the NHS of £500,000, had to be discarded. Those funds could have covered ten kidney transplants, fifteen hip replacements, and fifty cataract operations (Inform – Six tonnes of medicine costing NHS an estimated £500,000 thrown away). Expired stock not only results in significant unnecessary wastage, but also adds avoidable risk to patients, so what can be done to tackle it?
The Hidden Cost of Expired Stock
The financial impact is the most obvious cost of expired medical supplies, but the damage does not stop there. Patient safety is put at risk when expired or missing stock delays treatments or hampers emergency preparedness. Regulators such as the CQC and MHRA also expect to see well-managed supply chains, and disorganised stockrooms can raise compliance concerns. For frontline staff, shortages of supplies caused by poor inventory oversight create unnecessary stress, often forcing them to chase replacements or resort to last-minute costly procurement.
Why Manual Stock Tracking is No Longer Sufficient
Many NHS Trusts and healthcare providers still rely on spreadsheets, paper logs, or other manual processes to manage expiry dates. These systems may feel manageable at a departmental level but quickly fall short when scaled across multiple sites and thousands of SKUs. Expiry dates can slip through the cracks, stock is often over-ordered on a ‘just in case’ basis, and items regularly sit unused in one location while another department pays for fresh supplies. What may seem like just a small inefficiency in isolation can easily compound into significant waste and supply chain disruption at an organisational level.
How Inventory Management Software Can Help
Digital inventory management offers a way out of this cycle. Automated expiry tracking raises alerts well before products go out of date, giving teams time to act accordingly. Centralised stock visibility allows providers to redistribute supplies between departments or sites before they are wasted, while integration with procurement systems can reduce over-ordering and helps align purchasing decisions with actual usage. An effective system creates an audit-ready record of stock movement, helping providers demonstrate compliance while also identifying opportunities for potential savings.
Real-World Impact in the NHS
The NHS already has evidence that better stock control can prevent supplies from expiring needlessly. For example, trials of digital stock tracking within NHS Supply Chain have shown that hospitals can redistribute products approaching expiry across sites, ensuring they are used rather than written off (NHS Supply Chain report). When expiry information is visible centrally, Trusts can make decisions at scale.
Case studies from NHS England’s Clinical Waste Strategy illustrate this in practice. In one Trust, simple expiry-date monitoring within their digital system allowed consumables to be rotated more efficiently, cutting avoidable write-offs. In another, live tracking of high-value devices enabled soon-to-expire stock to be prioritised for use, avoiding substantial losses (UK Government announcement). These examples show that with real-time visibility, expired stock can be anticipated and prevented.
For healthcare providers, reducing expired stock starts with replacing unreliable manual logs with a single digital view of inventory. This enables automated alerts which flag items long before expiry, as well as live dashboards which allow managers to reallocate supplies across departments or even across whole Trusts. This saves money and ensures that clinical teams have the stock they need, when they need it.
With the right inventory management system in place, expired stock can be an avoidable cost to healthcare providers. It ultimately becomes a controllable risk that can be minimised through visibility, smarter redistribution, and better-informed procurement, all while meeting regulatory expectations.
