Expressions of interest for the provision of primary medical services for St Thomas Road Surgery

NHS Arden and Greater East Midlands Commissioning Support Unit (AGCSU) on behalf of Derby and Derbyshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) (referred to as the Commissioner) are seeking expressions of interest from providers who currently hold a General Medical Services (GMS) or Primary Medical Services (PMS) contract to deliver primary medical services at St Thomas Road Surgery, Derby, as a branch surgery with their current patient list of 4,851 (by allocation while noting patient registration choice) from 1st April 2024.

Please note the deadline for expressions of interest is 10:00am Friday 7th July 2023.

St Thomas Road Surgery primary care services is currently being delivered via a caretaker contract which will cease on 31st March 2024. In 2021/2022 a full procurement was undertaken which resulted in limited interest and the successful bidder subsequently withdrawing due to recruitment challenges and the limited staff resources available to transfer under the TUPE arrangement. The Commissioner is exploring an alternative contracting model to ensure that patients have good access to primary care services and for interested providers to demonstrate their commitment to quality and safe patient care and are operationally resilient to overcome the current challenges faced in general practice.

The ICB has therefore decided the most appropriate way to achieve this aim is to offer this practice as a branch surgery with patient list to GMS/PMS providers, thus retaining the current premises with the patent list transferring to the successful bidder. As a branch of the successful bidder's existing GMS/PMS contract, the annual contract value represented by the branch surgery will reflect global sum rates.

St Thomas Road Surgery provides services to a diverse population in a deprived area of Derby. The surgery has a raw patient list size of 4,851 (weighted 4,127.97) as of 1 April 2023. The ICB requires the services to be delivered from the current surgery premises located at Lister House Building, 207 St Thomas Road, Derby, DE23 8RJ. The premises lease is due to end on 24 March 2029, the new provider will be expected to enter into a new lease agreement with the landlord.

The caretaker provider employed new staff directly under their existing GMS contract to support services at St Thomas Road Surgery due to the difficulty in employing staff on a short-term fixed contract. Therefore, new staff would not be eligible for TUPE at the end of the caretaker contract term. Interested providers are therefore to note the limited clinical and non-clinical resources available to transfer under the TUPE Agreement.

As of publication date of this notice, the following staff are available for TUPE (which may be subject to change):

1x Practice Nurse 0.56 WTE

1x Patient Services/Quality Care-Coordinator 0.72 WTE