Following a long and thorough procurement process NHS East Riding of Yorkshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) has agreed to award a five-year contract, of around £27 million per annum, to City Health Care Partnership CIC (CHCP CIC) to provide community services across East Riding of Yorkshire from 1 April 2017.
The procurement of a new contract was created to address a number of challenges faced by the NHS in East Riding of Yorkshire, including the demands of an increasing, ageing population.
There are more people with long-term conditions; the rurality of the area creates difficulties with access to services, and as costs increase, every pound needs to count and used to improve the health and care of all the circa 300,000 East Riding CCG residents.
Gina Palumbo, Local GP and Chair of East Riding of Yorkshire CCG said,
“I am pleased to announce that, after a rigorous and thorough procurement process, we are awarding CHCP CIC a five-year contract for community services in East Riding of Yorkshire.
“We are committed to ensuring the people of East Riding of Yorkshire receive the best possible care. I am confident that the new contract will help provide a truly joined up health and social care system that delivers consistent, efficient, good quality care for years to come.”
Paula South, Director of Quality & Governance/Lead Nurse for the CCG commented:
“The future will see community services working much more closely together across both health and social care. Patients will receive more care in a community setting, closer to, or in their own homes and the new provider will be contracted to deliver more personalised, joined-up care that supports and encourages patients to manage their own condition, where it is safe and appropriate to do so.”
New ways of working will lead to reductions in the number of people having to be admitted to hospital, and enable earlier discharge from hospital with increased support available in the community.
The 5-year contract was awarded primarily on quality, which accounted for 65 per cent of the evaluation.
Cost was a secondary, though still an important consideration, accounting for 35 per cent of the final score. Whilst the CCG received two very good bids, CHCP CIC’s bid was particularly strong in areas such as transformation, innovation and technology, outcomes, clinical quality and performance management.
Paula added,
“CHCP CIC has a very good track record of delivering high-quality, innovative patient care throughout Hull. We look forward to working with them and our current provider to ensure a smooth transition from one to the other, with no deterioration in the quality and safety of services currently provided to patients.”
Andrew Burnell, CHCP CIC’s group Chief Executive, said:
“We are absolutely delighted to have been successful in our bid for this contract. We currently provide a wide range of services to the people of Hull and we will now be able to extend the same quality of care to the residents of the East Riding.
“We will use our best endeavours to deliver a smooth transition of services so patients feel no disruption to their treatment and that transferring staff feel secure and assured about their future, supported and welcome. Our aim between now and then is to make sure that as future colleagues they have the correct and accurate facts about coming to us and are looking forward to coming to work with us when we start delivering the new contract in April.
“The company is owned by the staff who work within it and who provide our services. We are ‘for better profit’ which means we are able to reinvest surpluses back into our services, our colleagues and the communities we work in. We are also able to demonstrate extra added value in what we do through measuring our social return on investment (SROI) for the services we provide and as a business. CHCP CIC has very high levels of patient and staff satisfaction and a proven track record in delivering improved primary and community services, so I am very confident in our ability to continue this progress with this new contract for services across the East Riding.”
CHCP CIC will assume the running of community services when contracts with the Humber NHS Foundation Trust (HFT) and some other providers finish on 31 March 2017. Staff will be invited to transfer across to the new provider.
Alex Seale, Director of Commissioning and Transformation commenting on the procurement process said:
“The design and procurement process was extremely thorough. We were advised throughout by independent experts who have experience of running complex procurement exercises and, as a result, had a really good understanding of the issues and procedures that needed to be addressed and managed.
“Patients were integral throughout our journey.”
“We felt it was very important that local people had the chance to comment and influence decisions about their community services and their healthcare. They were part of the evaluation panels and involved in interviewing the bidders.”
Peter Archer, a member of the CCG’s Involve (patient engagement) panel said:
“I’m passionate about improving local NHS services. The procurement of community services was a great opportunity for me to get involved and have my thoughts and views taken into account. It demonstrated the CCG’s commitment to really thinking about patients’ needs when designing new ways of providing care, now and for future generations.”
