Community Palliative Care Rapid Response Service

The basic principles of the open procurement route will be followed for this procurement to test the capacity and technical competence of Tenderers in accordance with Part B regime of the Public Contracts Regulations 2006(as amended). Regulation 120 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 provides for a temporary exemption for NHS healthcare procurements before 18th April 2016. NHS North Durham Clinical Commissioning Group, NHS Darlington Clinical Commissioning Group, NHS Durham Dales, Easington and Sedgefield Clinical Commissioning Group (CCGs), wish to commission a high quality Community Palliative Care Rapid Response Service for the County Durham and Darlington area. The aim of the service is to provide high quality, co-ordinated, flexible and responsive palliative nursing care in the community at short notice. The service also aims to enable patients to attain their preferred place of care and reduce inappropriate emergency admissions for those patients whose needs can be met by rapid, short term intervention in the end-of-life stage of their illness. An innovative funding approach has been adopted for this service where the respective CCGs will jointly fund the service with a partner organisation at a ratio of 50% each, i.e. the successful provider will contribute 50% of the service budget, and the CCGs will match this funding via an identical contribution. The Contracting Authorities wish to commission under separate lots: Community Palliative Care Rapid Response Service for County Durham (Lot 1) Community Palliative Care Rapid Response Service for Darlington(Lot 2) The service is to commence on 1.4.2016 for a period of 3 years with the option to extend the contract for a further 1 x 2 years period at the discretion of the Contracting Authority and subject to satisfactory contractual and financial performance. A bidder event will be held on Monday 21.9.2015 at Darlington CCG, Dr Piper House at 14:00. Bidders will be provided with an overview of the aims and objectives of the new service, an overview of the tender documentation and procurement process. Further information regarding registration for this event can be located within Document 1 of the tender documentation. The North of England Commissioning Support Service (NECS) is a commissioning support service hosted by NHS England and will run the tender process for and on behalf of NHS North Durham CCG, NHS Darlington CCG, NHS Durham Dales, Easington and Sedgefield CCG, the contracting authorities. NECS is utilising an electronic tendering tool to gather expressions of interest. Therefore, all communications will be conducted via the In-Tend portal, https://in-tendhost.co.uk/necs. It is free to register on the portal, which can be accessed at any time. A dedicated help-desk is available should potential providers have any queries and can be contacted on 0844 2728810 (Monday to Friday 8am to 5pm) or via emailing [email protected].