Provision of Community Urgent Care Services for the areas of Barking and Dagenham, Redbridge and Havering.

Barking & Dagenham, Havering and Redbridge Clinical Commissioning Groups (BHR CCGs) wish to commission an integrated community urgent care service, comprising four Urgent Treatment Centre services (UTCs) and an Out of Hours Home Visiting service (OOHHV). All services will be commissioned under a single contract.

The BHR vision is for GP led, multi-disciplinary services that effectively prevents avoidable A&E attendances and ensures that patients are treated in the most appropriate setting, according to their clinical and wellbeing needs.

To help people access the right care, right place, first time and to simplify the urgent care pathway, local urgent care will have just two points of access and a consistent name for services: (A) Bookable services accessed through NHS 111 Clinical Assessment Service (NHS 111 CAS); (B) Urgent Treatment Centres.

The UTCs will be the centre of a new model of urgent care, providing a consistent response during the specified periods of operation, where the patient need is classified as urgent rather than emergency. Two of the UTCs will be co-located with on-site emergency departments at King George Hospital in Goodmayes and Queens Hospital in Romford. The other two UTCs are based within a community hospital in Barking and within a polyclinic building in Harold Wood. The latter UTCs will not have an onsite emergency department.

The successful bidder can phase the mobilisation of the 5 services during May and June 2020 - but all services under the new contract should be operational by the end of June 2020.

The projected annual patient activity for the first contract year is circa 223,500 for the combined 4 UTC services and circa 6,400 for the OOHHV service. Around 28,800 UTC patients (of the 223,500) are classified as out-of-area.

Estimated maximum contract value: Please note that the value has been calculated using 2019/20 prices and is based upon projected activity levels for 2020/21 and a max contract term of 7 years (5yrs min + 2yrs optional extension). The calculation also includes an estimate of the income to be derived from recharging for out-of-area patients, the collection of which will be the responsibility of the successful bidder.

The CCGs are seeking expressions of interest from suitably qualified and experienced healthcare providers who can provide demonstrable evidence of a track record in delivering high quality and effective urgent care services.

BHR CCGs intend to hold a Bidder Briefing event on the 6 August 2019. Further information about the time and location of the event and how to register if you wish to attend will available via the tender portal. Please note, if you wish to attend the briefing, you must pre-register by 12:00 hours Friday 2 August 2019. If you have not pre-registered by this time, you will not admitted to the event.

Additional information: BHR CCGs are aware that activity levels may change over the term of the contract and additionally there may be changes to the primary care landscape that impact on the services and/or activity that is delivered by the provider under the contract. Therefore during the contract term, the contract value may increase by up to 20% from the contract value stated below and additional services related to urgent care may also be included in the contract.

Any expenditure, work or effort undertaken prior to contract award is accordingly a matter solely for the commercial judgment of potential service providers. In such circumstances, and in any event, the CCGs or its advisors shall not be liable for any costs or loss of expenses whatsoever incurred by the respondent and company, agent, subsidiary or organisation may have contributed to any response submitted to this notice.

The ITT reference for this tender is PRJ804.

All completed bids must be submitted by 12.00 on 19 September 2019.

The Procurement process is facilitated entirely online via the stated e-procurement portal ProContract (the Portal).

Interested Bidders must access the ITT documentation via the link provided and submit a ITT response via the online questionnaires on the e-Tendering portal 'ProContract' before the submission deadline. See the procurement documentation for more details.

The ITT can be found at https://procontract.due-north.com/Advert/Index?advertId=47531d83-fe39-e911-80f2-005056b64545

The services in the scope of this procurement are healthcare services falling within Schedule 3 to the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 ("the Regulations") which are not subject to the full regime of the Regulations, but is instead governed by the "Light Touch Regime" contained within Chapter 3, Section 7 of the Regulations(Regulations 74 to 77).

BHR CCGs will adopt the Open procedure as a template for this procurement. The tendering process will be conducted in accordance with the requirements and flexibilities provided by Regulations 74 to 76 of the Regulations. BHR CCGs will run a transparent tender process, treating all Bidders equally. For the avoidance of doubt, BHR CCGs will not be bound by the Regulations or the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union or any other regulations or legislation except for the specific parts or circumstances that apply to the procurement of services such as this.

Neither the inclusion of a Bidder selection stage, nor the use of any language or terms found in the Regulations, nor the description of the procedure voluntarily adopted by BHR CCGs nor any other indication, shall be taken to mean that BHRs CCGs intends to hold itself bound by the Regulations, save those applicable to services coming within the scope of such as this.