Healthcare and reverse auctions: odd bedfellows? Queensland Health is one of the country’s biggest health providers, employing more than 75,000 people and managing over $2 billion of contracts annually. When the clinical contracts team decided to use Trade Interchange’s e-Negotiation tool for procurement of their healthcare items - including gloves, gowns and protective equipment - there was some scepticism amongst clinicians. With concerns about decisions being driven by price and not clinical practice, its understandable there was some resistance to the idea. The concern that reverse auctions are a standalone ‘price only’ procurement tool is a common one. What is less well known is that they’re also used in conjunction with a set of qualitative criteria, and can

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