Community Independence Services

The Community Independence Service is a service providing nursing and therapy-led rapid response and community based rehabilitative support to mainly older people experiencing an unplanned issue in their care. Its remit does not include core district nursing and therapy services provided in the inner London area. The CIS service is currently delivered by a provider partnership pursuant to a 22 month contract with a core value of £9.08m in 2017/18. The current contract is due to come to an end on 31 July 2018.

This provides notification that NHS Central London Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), on behalf of itself and associate commissioners NHS Hammersmith and Fulham CCG and West London CCG, are issuing a Direct Award of a short term contract to the incumbent service provider of the Community Independence Services (CIS). The interim contract will be for an 8 month period to align this service contract end date with wider NHS contracting, which in 2016/17 moved to a two year contracting focus, with almost all wider NHS trust contracts currently planned to run to 31 March 2019 (subject to amendment).

Contracting authorities are also planning for the alignment of this contract to published plans in each of the CCG areas for delivering integrated care systems and the Five Year Forward View agenda. Each CCG has plans to introduce new integrated care models from April 2019, moving to formally contracted arrangements from April 2020 at the latest. The contract for this service will therefore include an option to extend for up to a further 12 months to enable the alignment of the contract into the wider integrated care procurement.

The new models of care being developed will establish integrated pathways in regard to physical health, social care and mental health to deliver holistic patient care. This interim contract ensures a continuity of essential service provision to the local population whilst new integrated care models are developed over the course of the contract in each CCG area, and therefore the CCGs have assessed that the incumbent provider is the only capable provider at this time.

Additional information: The CCGs plan to engage with the market during 2018 to assist development of its future specification of requirements, with the intention of informing the process to award substantive contracts to deliver the new models of care from April 2020 at the latest. Market engagement will take place in 2018.

Award of a contract without prior publication of a call for competition in the Official Journal of the European Union in the cases listed below

The services can be provided only by a particular economic operator for the following reason:

Absence of competition for technical reasons.

Explanation:

This interim contract is being awarded to the incumbent provider to ensure continuity of essential health services to the local population whilst the CCGs develop substantive new services with increased scope and value.

The Contracting Authority is developing new models of care which will establish integrated pathways in regard to physical health, social care and mental health to deliver holistic patient care.

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