MEMORY ASSESSMENT SERVICE

This VEAT notice is to inform the market that Sussex NHS intends to directly award a 12-month contract following a ten-day standstill period from the publication of this notice to Care Unbound Ltd (trading as HERE) for the provision of Brighton and Hove's Memory Assessment Service for NHS Sussex ('the Integrated Care System') commencing 1st April 2023.

National strategy dictates that health care systems ensure that people living with dementia are supported to live at home with their families for as long as possible. Early diagnosis and intervention, advance care planning, timely access to specialist assessment and treatment, and effective support for carers are key components of good care. Memory Assessment Services are the cornerstone to ensuring that people receive a timely diagnosis and that people living with dementia and those that care for them are supported throughout their dementia journey.

The service provides assessment, diagnosis, medication initiation and titration, and post diagnostic support for up to one year.

NHS Sussex intends to directly award to ensure key organisational change and transformation objectives, including the development of equitable Sussex wide approaches to service delivery are delivered. This will include the development of convergent standards and performance metrics, benchmarking of investment based on population needs, evident Health Inequalities and will be informed by population health clinical intelligence.

This will provide the necessary additional time for NHS Sussex to complete and embed its necessary transformation work and to understand better and accurately specify future specifications for these services. This will then inform commissioning intentions which will be put to the market in 2023/24.

The direct award is made in the context of meeting patient need and improving service equity at a time of significant national and local strategic service delivery transformation; therefore they are felt to be strategically and clinically justifiable.