Public procurement notice: Prior Information Notice Without Call For Competition
Published: 2019-05-07
Buyer: NHS Arden and Greater East Midlands Commissioning Support Unit on behalf of NHS England
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
CPV classification: 85100000: Health services | 85130000: Dental practice services
Estimated value: 1 GBP

Technical requirements: NHS England and NHS Improvement (Midlands and East of England) (the Contracting Authority) is seeking to identify suitable potential providers of oral surgery, sedation and restorative services as part of its strategy for the development and delivery of integrated dental services across the Midlands and East of England.
The longer term plan is to review these new contract roll outs and pilot them with the aim to encourage greater joint working between providers. Developing them into accountable care organisations will ensure services are configured in a way that supports the local Sustainability and Transformation Partnership areas (STPs) and emerging Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) longer term. This will ensure that the integrated working and aligned incentives built through the model will be sustainable and that organisational siloes will be truly dissolved.
NHS Arden and Greater East Midlands Commissioning Support Unit (AGCSU), on behalf of NHS England and NHS Improvement (Midlands and East of England) is inviting potential providers to complete the questionnaire attached to the prior information notice tender opportunity 35475 by no later than 5:00 p.m. on 12.5.2019. Providing this vital information will help the Commissioners inform the specification as part of the ongoing service review.
Please note that the notice states no Lots, however information below describes the proposed lotting structure.
The proposed 12 oral surgery and sedation services will be linked to 5 pilot Restorative services (1 in each STP area — Herts and West Essex/Beds Luton and Milton Keynes/Northants/Leicester Leicestershire and Rutland/Lincolnshire) and they will provide an integrated pathway across the health community for patients who require this specialised dental care. Some of the objectives are:
— to have appropriately registered, qualified, trained and experienced professionals to ensure that the complexity of the patient or procedure matches the skills and setting of the individual or team providing the treatment,
— to have services strategically located across the specified area to improve equality of access, improve waiting times for treatment and to ensure that patients who most need the services are able to be referred to a local provider,
— for Managed Clinical Networks (MCNs) to oversee the implementation and the functioning of the specialist pathways, including quality improvement, mentorship, education, training of others, audit and leadership. All oral surgery, sedation and restorative providers will be expected to play an active role and have formal links to the MCNs,
— that the service will deliver treatment to those patients whose defined needs are not expected to be within the remit of a general dental practitioner within primary care and for whom the complexity of their treatment or medical condition does not necessitate care provision in a secondary care setting,
— for patients to be accepted for treatment only if eligible for NHS care and referred through the new Midlands and new East of England Referral Management System (RMS). Patients who are not eligible for this service will be returned to the appropriate setting,
— for the service to work to a time-limited national Personal Dental Services (PDS) Agreement. The service will provide consistent, high quality care based on the quality assurance principles as set out in the PDS agreement,
— to improve access to patients requiring these specialist care dental services, pain and anxiety management for patients with severe dental phobia/anxiety and specialist advice,
— new providers’ to actively work in partnership with NHS England and NHS Improvement, Dental Local Professional Network (LPN), Managed Clinical Networks (MCN), STP’s and Primary Care Networks to review and implement relevant commissioning standards to transform specialised dental services within the first 12 months of the contract commencement.
The proposed areas below are only proposed and not final at this stage. They have been based on a number of factors outlined in the health needs assessments. Service review and bidders market engagement questionnaire submissions will further help inform the final lotting identified locations.
Please see Section VI.3) Additional information of this notice for information on “How we will pay for it”.


Award value: 1