Public procurement notice: Prior Information Notice Without Call For Competition
Published: 2019-01-14
Buyer: NHS Buckinghamshire Clinical Commissioning Group
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
CPV classification: 85100000: Health services
Estimated value: 32000000 EUR

Technical requirements: Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Clinical Assessment for Adult Continuing Healthcare (CHC) and Children’s Continuing Care (CC) Services
Buckinghamshire Clinical Commissioning Group (BCCG) and Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group (OCCG) are planning to contract with Oxfordshire Health NHS Foundation Trust (OHFT) for the supply of clinical Continuing Healthcare and Continuing Care services under a Single Tender Waiver (STW). This approach enables integration of local services to release significant benefits to patients and is also expected to improve the use of public funding and therefore deliver best value. The contract will be for five years, with the option to extend for 1 further 5 year period. The estimated annual value is 3 200 000 GBP. A copy of this advert is also available from the Contracts Finder website — please refer there for the full service description. Other organisations that believe they could provide this service and would like to express interest should contact Mark Stanbrook, Lead Senior Procurement Manager at mstanbrook@nhs.net
Buckinghamshire Clinical Commissioning Group (BCCG) and Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group (OCCG) are planning to contract with Oxfordshire Health NHS Foundation Trust (OHFT) for the supply of clinical continuing healthcare and continuing care services under a Single Tender Waiver (STW).
In December 2017 NHS Aylesbury and Chiltern CCGs (now BCCG) commissioned an interim Adults Continuing Healthcare (CHC) and Children’s Continuing Care (CC) Service following early notice being received on an existing contract from the incumbent provider for the area of Buckinghamshire. Due to the timeframes required it was determined that an interim provider needed to be appointed urgently to mobilise the services. This was to guarantee continuity of services for patients (adults, children and young people) across Buckinghamshire.
OCCG have contracted with OHFT for their CHC and CC clinical assessment services for some years as part of a wider Community Services contractual arrangement.
The interim arrangement in Bucks is due to finish on the 31.3.2019 and the community services contract in Oxfordshire is also due to end at this time. A long term solution is now sought to encompass Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.
Since the interim solution in Buckinghamshire was agreed it has been announced by NHS England that Buckinghamshire will form part of an Integrated Care System. Under the premise that Oxfordshire will also be part of an Integrated Care System in due course, the vision is that the clinical CHC assessment services will be common to both Oxfordshire CCG (OCCG) and Buckinghamshire CCG (BCCG) and provided by OHFT. OHFT currently provides these services to both CCGs but not in an integrated way. We are looking for a delivery model across both Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire that delivers a transformative and future proofed model of CHC assessment and the purchasing of care packages that will maximise the advantages of a large scale long term service.
The optimum long-term solution is to draw on the strengths from across the Integrated Care System (ICS). This includes expertise in CHC from Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust (OHFT) which already delivers CHC clinical assessment services to the population of Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, expert knowledge of local hospital and community services and discharge pathways and an ability to recruit and retain nursing staff from Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust (BHT).
This will be combined with knowledge of the local care home and domiciliary care market and procurement expertise and capacity available in Buckinghamshire County Council (BCC); in Oxfordshire work is underway to establish where this expertise is best placed. Together these will simplify and speed up CHC processes and so improve the quality of the experience for patients. This would not be possible with different service suppliers across these 2 counties.
Given these strong existing relationships, knowledge and experience, OHFT were originally identified as the only reasonable option for delivering the service in 2017 in Buckinghamshire and have been the Contractor for Community Services (including CHC and CC services) in Oxfordshire for several years. Building on the relationship and expertise that has developed since then, BCCG and OCCG now wish to utilise these services to provide a long term solution for an initial period of 5 years from the 1.4.2019 with an option to extend for up to a further 5 years as part of developing the Buckinghamshire Integrated Care System. The indicative value of the service is circa 3 200 000 GBP per annum which covers both counties.
This approach enables integration of local services to release significant benefits to patients and is also expected to improve the use of public funding and therefore deliver best value.
This involves the clinical assessment of individuals for eligibility for Continuing Healthcare (CHC) under the national framework and creating a care plan for those that meet the criteria. Ongoing reviews of individuals’ status to continue to meet eligibility and to make sure that their package of care continues to meet their assessed needs is a minimum annual requirement. This service also requires liaison with the brokerage/contracts teams making and negotiating the placements.
This involves the clinical assessment of those up to 18 years of age for eligibility to have their nursing needs funded under the National Framework for Children and Young Peoples Continuing Care. This involves working with the Local Authority and Education for joint funded packages of care and Adult Social Care those transitioning to Adult Services from 14 yrs to 25 years in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.
BCCG has made the decision to deliver the placement and brokerage function for eligible CHC adult packages via Buckinghamshire County Council; in Oxfordshire the location of this function is under review. It is therefore possible that delivery of the placement function may remain with OHFT, although it is expected that a partnership approach will be taken to delivering efficiencies and parity for patients within this function.
Where CHC eligibility criteria is not met there is a further eligibility criteria for those in nursing care home settings where, if there is an assessed, eligible need for nursing care that Funded Nursing Care is provided for an individual. Management of the information gathering, reporting requirements and payment mechanisms is part of this service, with recognition that these will need to be tailored to the payment and reporting processes in place in both Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.


Award value: 32000000