Public Health Input to Independent Funding Requests in North West London

The North West London (NWL) Collaboration of Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) commissions healthcare services on behalf of the NWL patients, one of these services consists in providing specialist support to commissioners in policy development and management of requests for treatments not routinely funded by the NHS or funded in line with agreed clinical thresholds/pathways.

The Individual Funding Request (IFR) and Planned Procedures with Threshold (PPwT) service ensure an evidence-based, equitable and standardised process with consistency in decision making across NWL.

The IFR route is suitable only for treatments that fall into the 'not normally funded' category for use in clinically exceptional circumstances and which need to be considered on an individual patient basis. Consisting of assessing, processing and decision making for all IFRs requests received for NWL patients.

The policy development function is informed when patient cohorts are identified, by means of research or IFR applications and may require completion of clinical evidence reviews. This could include, Equality Impact Assessments (EQA), economic evaluation, clinical engagement and financial modelling.

To assist this process the public health provision requires Consultants in public health medicine for 1.2 sessions (10 hours) per week to provide public health support with the capacity to deliver the service within budget and given timelines.

The requirements of the IFR service is for the public health provision attend weekly IFR clinical triage, IFR panel training workshops, IFR and Appeal panels. In addition to support the policy development function when patient cohorts are identified, by means of research and completion of evidence reviews.

The CCG is looking to award the contract for a period of 1 year with the option to extend for a further 1 year. The total potential maximum value is £70,000 per annum.

The purpose of this engagement with the market is to assess the level of interest from providers to deliver the service. Attached to this advert is a draft specification and interested Providers are asked to express their interest by completing the attached questionnaire. Responses to this Request for Information will be used to inform the contract approach and as such, a response is important.

Completed questionnaires should be submitted to alice.donovan-hart@nhs.net by 12pm on Thursday 30th August 2018.