North East Essex GP Support Service

Concepts

• office support
• colchester
• support services
• primary medical care services
• actual service delivery
• additional services
• non-clinical services
• other local support providers
• other support providers
• other complementary services

Location

Based within North East Essex - Tendring and Colchester district areas

Description

This is a voluntary ex ante transparency notice and is intended to provide notice of NHS Suffolk and North East Essex Integrated Care Board's ("the ICB") intention to award a contract for the provision of a GP Support Service to General Practice across North East Essex. This service will be for north east Essex based GP practices, who face a range of significant challenges in the day to day delivery of primary medical care. This service will reactively support invited practices, via quality improvement methodologies, to build their capability and resilience. Support is also available to practices wishing to proactively achieve quality improvement. There will be a focus on collaborative working with other local support providers, to achieve a co-ordinated approach that optimises resources.

Total Quantity or Scope

Nationally and locally, primary medical care is seeing growth in the challenges faced by GP Practice teams to respond to growing patient populations, growing older populations, and increasing demand for services to meet population health needs, whilst mitigating the impact of infrastructure constraints (like those of workforce and estates). This can pose challenge to the effective delivery of quality and safe primary medical care services. The national Delivery Plan for Recovering Access to General Practice alongside the SNEE Primary Care Strategy, provide a strategic vision and accompanying delivery plan to improve patient access to primary medical care, address the gap between demand and capacity, and increase workforce well-being, via various initiatives. Included in the Delivery plan is a requirement for ICBs to provide support offers to GP practices who are facing challenges in operationally delivering a sustainable and safe level of primary medical care services. To this end, the NE Essex GP Support Service is being retained to deliver bespoke support offers to General Practice, spanning both reactive and proactive approaches to respond to realised and emerging challenges. A NE Essex Quality, Sustainability and Innovation (QSI) Group of local stakeholders, through an MDT style approach will oversee delivery of support services to GP Practices and support a co-ordinated approach between the current providers. Identified practices will be referred to the contract holder for full assessment, followed by development of a bespoke, co-produced support/improvement plan. The provider will work in partnership with other support providers such as the ICB's training hub to provide a co-ordinated support approach, to optimise resources and patient outcomes. This service will provide operational, rather than clinical support, and will be expected to signpost to other complementary services as appropriate. In addition to action planning, the service will provide subject matter expertise in the local primary medical care environment, introduction to quality improvement methodologies, supporting timely, face to face analysis and problem-solving support, providing advice and guidance on best practice, operational techniques, access to tools and resources and the sharing of insights and lessons. The support will be hands-off, in a trusted, confidential environment, encouraging independence and sustainability, once the support is withdrawn. This is a voluntary ex ante transparency notice and is intended to provide notice of the ICB's intention to award a 2-year contract (from 1st April 2025 - 31st March 2027), with a potential extension of 2 additional years. The maximum contract value is £800,560 (exc. VAT) and this will be subject to inflationary rises in line with NHS Guidance. It is the ICB's intention to award this contract to the existing supplier, GP Primary Choice Ltd (GPPC) for the provision of a GP Support Service to General Practice across North East Essex. Following an extended pilot period, tested in response to identified needs within Primary medical Care, the ICB is seeking to establish this service for a longer period. The pilot undertaken within Primary medical Care, has undergone a full evaluation at the end of the pilot period, reviewing outcomes against need, to determine future commissioning requirements. The initial outcome of the evaluation identified the need to secure ongoing provision of this service in response to General Practice needs. GPPC, who have delivered the service during the extended pilot period, are an embedded organisation within the North East Essex Alliance, with established working relationships, interdependencies and links with Primary medical Care, as well as knowledge obtained about the needs within the practices and an understanding of the local demographics, which supports improvement plan development. GPPC is also locally based and is able to respond to referrals, with the preferred face to face support, within hours when urgent cases present. This places them in a unique position to deliver this service in a way that will support the ongoing realisation of the maximum benefits possible. The ICB will award the contract utilising the NHS terms and conditions of goods and non-clinical services.

Award Detail

Renewal Options

2 years with a potential extension of 2 years

CPV Codes

• 79500000 - Office-support services

Indicators

• Options are available.
• Award on basis of price and quality.

Legal Justification

The incumbent provider (GP Primary Choice Ltd) has successfully delivered this service for the past 2 years and has the knowledge, expertise, experience and interdependencies from close working partnerships with General Practice partners that has taken time to develop. This service retains in depth knowledge of the Practices it serves and embedded and trusted relationships with multiple partners, particularly in General Practice teams such as Practice Managers and Practice partners. Introducing a new provider would risk turbulence and disrupting vital links, which would impact the effectiveness of the support offer, putting general practice recovery and quality patient access and care at risk of untimely recovery. Relationship and trust building has been a key requirement of this service throughout the course of the extended pilot. GPPC has worked to develop relationships which support and enable access to key Practice information that assists in the identification and delivery of key quality improvement opportunities within Practices for the benefit of both the Practice and the population. It is believed that introducing a different organisation with different branding, to deliver this service would significantly impact the ability to quickly and effectively engage with General Practice, due to the need to establish trust with individuals. The service has experienced and trained staff in place that have worked locally within General Practice and developed that trust with General Practice teams which can flex to the individual needs of the Practices to provide face to face bespoke improvement support throughout the referral packages. The ICB deems that changing providers at a time where General Practice is under increasing pressure and facing ever increasing challenges, would have an adverse impact on achievable outcomes for both the practices being supported and for their populations. The ICB is therefore seeking to re-commission the current provider to continue its service delivery to provide stability in a fragile environment. The ICB will observe a 10-day standstill from the date of publication of this VEAT, during which the Authority will not enter into any contractual arrangement.

Other Information

Contract review provision: Please note that the services and associated specification and prices commissioned within this contract may be subject to review and change, any changes will be through a variation to the contract in accordance with Regulation 72 (1) (a) of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. Additionally, the contract may also be amended in terms of the original services supplied, where, following assessment it is identified that it is logical for additional services to be delivered in conjunction with this contract and by the provider, both in terms of actual service delivery and to avoid duplication of costs.