Community Palliative Care Rapid Response Service

The aim of the service is to provide high quality, co-ordinated, flexible and responsive palliative nursing care in the community at short notice. The service also aims to enable patients to attain their preferred place of care and reduce inappropriate emergency admissions for those patients whose needs can be met by rapid, short term intervention in the end-of-life stage of their illness.

An innovative funding approach has been adopted for this service where the respective CCGs will jointly fund the service with a partner organisation at a ratio of 50% each, i.e. the successful provider will contribute 50% of the service budget, and the CCGs will match this funding via an identical contribution.

The Contracting Authorities have commissioned the service under separate lots:

Community Palliative Care Rapid Response Service for County Durham (Lot 1)

Community Palliative Care Rapid Response Service for Darlington(Lot 2)

The service is to commence on 1.4.2016 for a period of 3 years with the option to extend the contract for a further 1 x 2 years period at the discretion of the Contracting Authority and subject to satisfactory contractual and financial performance.