ΕΚΑΠΥ

What it is

The National Central Health Procurement Authority (ΕΚΑΠΥ) is a public law body established by Law 4472/2017 and supervised by the Ministry of Health. It is the central purchasing body of the public health system: it plans and runs central tenders for pharmaceuticals, medical supplies, medical devices and services on behalf of the hospitals of the national health system and the health regions.

What it does

• It plans. It draws up the operational plan for centralising procurement, deciding which categories will be bought centrally and which will stay with the hospitals.
• It keeps registers. It runs the electronic health procurement platform with registers of products, suppliers, technical specifications and prices, on which hospital tenders also rely.
• It runs tenders. As a rule through framework agreements or dynamic purchasing systems, from which hospitals draw through call-off contracts without a new tender.
• It monitors. It collects consumption and price data from hospitals and feeds the price observatory.

What it means for the supplier

For the categories that have been centralised, the ΕΚΑΠΥ tender is the only route to the hospitals of the national system. A framework agreement of two or four years locks in the suppliers of the item for the whole period. ΕΚΑΠΥ tenders are almost always above the EU thresholds, published in TED, divided into dozens or hundreds of items with separate award, and attract the strongest competition in the health market. Following its planning, approved at the start of each year, shows which categories will be centralised and when.

The guide to hospital tenders describes how central procurement combines with each hospital's own procurement.