General Practitioner Out of Hours Consultations

City and Hackney CCG (CCG) intends to award a contract for face to face GP Out of Hours consultation activity to the City and Hackney Urgent Healthcare Social Enterprise (CHUHSE) who is the current provider of these healthcare services in the local area. The contract is for a short period of 8 months to allow time for a review of local urgent care services. CCG intends to award a contract for face to face GP Out of Hours consultation activity to the City and Hackney Urgent Healthcare Social Enterprise (CHUHSE) using the negotiated procedure without prior publication. CHUHSE is the current provider of GP OOH face to face appointment in the local area. CCG is currently undertaking a comprehensive review of all urgent care services with the aim of developing a new model of integrated urgent primary care that will provide access to urgent primary care across the 24 hour period from April 2019 onwards. The award of this contract is to cover the August 2018 to March 2019 period; after this time a contract for a substantive service will be put in place.The CCG believes that CHUHSE is the only provider capable of delivering this service over a short term period. The CCG believes that even if a provider already has these services at another site, mobilising them in the CCG area and building relationships with local providers would not be possible by August 2018.

City and Hackney have procured a new Integrated Urgent Care Service in collaboration with 6 other CCGs across North East London (NEL IUC) which is due to go live on 1st August 2018.

The new NEL IUC service will be the single telephony access point to urgent care services and will include the telephone assessment and advice previously provided by GP Out of Hours (GP OOH).

As a result, there is a requirement for a new service to provide the face to face element of GP OOH for patients who are referred onwards from NEL IUC.

The CCG is currently undertaking a comprehensive review of all urgent care services with the aim of developing a new model of integrated urgent primary care that will provide access to urgent primary care across the 24 hour period by March 2019.

To bridge the gap between the introduction of the NEL IUC service and the new model of local integrated urgent care the CCG intends to award of contract for a face to face GP OOH to CHUHSE.

The CCG believes the use of the negotiated procedure without prior publication is justified by competition being absent for technical reasons, namely, that CHUHSE as the existing provider is the only provider capable of delivering this service until the substantive service is put in place.

Suppliers are invited to express their interest in this engagement by emailing nelcsu.welcpod-procurement@nhs.net answering all questions in the attached Annex.

Suppliers will not be prejudiced by any response/failure to respond to this engagement exercise and a response to this notice does not guarantee an invitation to participate in any future procurement.

Additional information: The deadline for expressing an interest and submitting a duly completed questionnaire is on 26th March 2018.