Community Services in Sutton

This contract award notice provides notification that NHS Sutton Clinical Commissioning Group's Governing Body has agreed to directly award an interim, transitional contract for Sutton Community Services to the Sutton Health and Care Provider Alliance (with Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust hosting the contract) for a period of one plus one years (April 2019 to March 2021).

This interim contract is considered essential to ensure a continuity of essential service provision to the local population while new integrated care models are developed over the course of the contract in the CCG area; the CCG has assessed that the provider identified is the only capable provider at this time.

Considering the national strategy (NHS England Five Year Forward View) to implement new models of care and to reshape services across health and care around the patient in a more integrated way, the 12 month notice period gives the CCG an unrealistic timeframe to fully plan and undertake a complex re-procurement of the community services that will be fit for purpose in the future. The CCG is therefore awarding the Community Health Services contract directly to Sutton Health and Care Provider Alliance hosted by Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust as an interim transitional and stabilising arrangement. The CCG has assessed this interim solution to be a safe and logical destination to transfer the services with the existing commitment and to then work to develop a new specification of its future requirements that will need to align community healthcare services to primary care with the long term objective of transforming and integrating health and care services out of hospital.

Prior to commencing a formal procurement, essential planning work needs to be undertaken to ensure that the right services are procured with the correct quality and outcomes framework and financial incentives to ensure that services deliver the required results. This is expected to be a 12 to 24 month piece of work due to its complexity and level of transformation needed, hence the interim contract award.

The CCG is committed to inviting expressions of interest from the market at the end of this interim contract period, commencing sooner if the required documentation around specifications and outcomes is complete, such interest being invited via the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) and Contracts Finder in accordance with the Public Contracts Regulations (PCR) 2015 (as amended) and the NHS (Procurement, Patient Choice and Competition) (No.2) Regulations (PPCCR) 2013.

Additional information: The CCG will carry out transparent market engagement in parallel with the interim contract to invite input and innovation based on evidenced successes elsewhere to inform the development of the longer term opportunity of a substantive contract. As part of this engagement process, the CCG will make available to the public interim statements and updates on the specification/co-designed models of care for proactive and preventative models of care for feedback and input.

This interim contract ensures a continuity of essential service provision to the local population while new integrated care models are developed over the course of the contract in the CCG area. The CCG has assessed that the provider identified is the only capable provider at this time to safely transition the services, ensuring that local care pathways continue to respond to local patient demand while development work takes place.

The CCG plans for market engagement to be undertaken during 2018/19 to assist development of its future specification of requirements and inform the preparations for an appropriate process to award a substantive contract(s) to deliver the new requirements of the CCG following the redesign work. The award of this interim contract to the identified provider is considered a proportionate decision given the current circumstances and recognising the role that competition will play as the new requirements of the CCG more fully emerge during the life of this interim contract.