Specialist Emergency Lifting Chairs for Care Homes in Mid and South Essex

This is a Contract Award Notice to communicate a contract awarded by NHS Castle Point & Rochford Clinical Commissioning Group (the "CCG") as lead commissioner on behalf of the Mid and South Essex Clinical Commissioning Groups: NHS Mid Essex CCG, NHS Basildon & Brentwood CCG, NHS Southend CCG, NHS Thurrock CCG.

The contract award is made to Felgain's Ltd for the provision of Specialist Emergency Lifting Chairs in care homes and rapid response teams, building on a previous falls pilot across Mid and South Essex. The aim of the original pilot was to safeguard the lives of residents by ensuring they are lifted promptly after a fall, reduce avoidable hospital admission, and keep residents 'at home' and reduce impact on the emergency services and associated healthcare professionals.

The contract will run 1st April 2021 - 31st March 2023, with an option to extend for up to a further 24-month period from 1st April 2023 - 31st March 2025, at a total aggregate contract value including extensions of £249,999.78 (£208,333.15 + VAT).

To date the pilot has provided: - Additional capacity and specialist portable moving and handling equipment within the urgent nursing intervention team and Essex care homes. - Enhanced support to care homes to influence the way they currently manage patients who have fallen redirecting calls away from the local ambulance service. - Influenced local 111 tele-triage service, incorporating urgent nursing intervention team as a possible alternative referral pathway for suspected non-injurious falls. - Deployment of emergency lifting chairs within seven acute wards to support patient safety and dignity of care and staff health and wellbeing, and the Trust has now rolled this model out to all hospital sites across MSE.

In order to continue to realise additional and significant benefits in terms of quality of care for residents/patients and support to the staff caring for them, as well as maximise benefit of consistency of product being deployed across the STP and consistency of the training being received within care homes and urgent nursing intervention teams, the CCG's have taken a decision to purchase additional specialist emergency lifting chairs to deploy across more care homes and rapid response teams in Mid and South Essex. After conducting market analysis regarding the manufacture of the required products, including UK distributors and availability of other sourcing routes being exhausted, the CCG deems that using the negotiated procedure without prior publication is permitted on the grounds that competition is absent for technical reasons.

As such, the CCGs published a Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency Notice (VEAT) on 24th February 2021 in Find a Tender Service, expressing their clear intention to enter into the contract with Felgain's Ltd. The 10 day standstill period expired on 6th March 2021 and upon no appeals being received, the CCGs proceeded to formally award the contract on 12th March 2021.

Additional information: This contract has been deemed a Products contract because the percentage of the contract value pertaining to the provision of the Products is greater than the percentage of the contract value pertaining to the Service provision for such Products, and as such the Products element is deemed to characterise the main subject matter of the contract.