North Staffordshire Community Ophthalmology Tier 2 Service

North Staffordshire, and Stoke-on-Trent Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) currently commission an Community (Tier 2) Ophthalmology service based in various locations across North Staffordshire, Stoke on Trent and Staffordshire Moorlands. This is offered on a basis of direct referral to Patients registered with GPs contracted with these CCGs.

Services are available for service users registered with a General Practitioner in North Staffordshire CCG and Stoke on Trent CCG.

Commissioners wish to undertake in the future a Procurement exercise to appoint a single Prime Provider to deliver Tier 2 Ophthalmology services.

Community Tier 2 services will consist of 5 elements:

• Glaucoma Referral Refinement (GRR)
• Minor Eye Care Services (MECS)
• Pre/Post-Operative Cataract
• Paediatric Shared Care
• Ocular Hypertension (OHT) and Suspect Glaucoma

The service will need to work closely with local partner organisations to ensure that a swift, coordinated pathway is followed.

The final full-service specification will be published as part of a future procurement process around early March 2020.

In particular the commissioners would like to understand the capacity and the ability of Providers to deliver this service and therefore issuing this Prior Information Notice to invite expressions of interest in any future procurement..

Additional information: Interested parties are asked to express their interest via e-mail to r.klimczak@nhs.net and samantha.yates6@nhs.net stating your Company name and contact details

Should a procurement be undertaken, this will be done via the Midlands and Lancashire CSU e. Procurement portal hosted by Bravo Solutions. "Light Touch Regime" services: the future procurement will be for clinical services which are Light Touch Regime services for the purpose of the Public Contracts Regulations 2 015 as specified in Schedule 3 of the Regulations ("Regulations"). Accordingly, the Contracting Authorities are only bound by those parts of the Regulations detailed in Chapter 3 Particular Procurement Regimes Section 7. The contracting authorities are not voluntarily following any other part of the Regulations. The procedure which the Contracting Authorities are following is set out in the Annex 1 issued with any future tender. As the CCG is a relevant body for the purpose of the National Health Service (Procurement, Patient Choice and Competition) (No. 2) Regulations 2013 these Regulations also apply to this procurement.