Hospice at Home and Palliative Care Community Service for Adults and Children and Young People

NHS Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, and Berkshire West Integrated Care Board (BOB ICB) is seeking to engage with potential providers to understand the position of the market and help develop an approach for recommissioning a Hospice at Home and Palliative Care Community Service for all ages in the Buckinghamshire locality.

This service will predominantly serve the population of Buckinghamshire, but when appropriate may also include Oxfordshire and Berkshire West. The main responsibilities include (but are not limited to):

• 24/7 access to specialist nursing care at home. • Provide advanced symptom management including: - complex symptom management skills - knowledge of the deterioration and dying process - understanding of rare disorders and their pathways • Co-ordinate care working in collaboration with other professionals and providers and input into Multidisciplinary Teams (MDT), to support a person's palliative and end of life needs and management through to debrief following death. • Be an active member in other professional meetings, including but not limited to hospitals, hospices, and the community. • Support personalised care and support conversations and advance care planning, including emergency care and treatment planning (and the use of ReSPECT) and accessing NHS continuing healthcare funding and care if appropriate. • To support end of life decision-making, including preferred place of care if important to the person. • Help support rapid discharge from hospital to hospice or home for care at the end of life. • Provide bereavement support for people with complex needs [this may be via referral) • Provide and support education and training programmes for specialist and generalist providers delivering palliative care for the BOB ICS.

The service will be instrumental in providing equitable specialist palliative care services as well as supporting education and training to non-specialist services both NHS and Non-NHS. The service will work closely with the Integrated Care Board and system partners across all sectors (Primary, Secondary, Community Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector), raising awareness of death and dying and supporting compassionate communities to grow, whilst working towards changing society's perception of death.

The ICB invites interested providers to complete a pre-procurement market engagement questionnaire. Please submit your completed questionnaire by Friday 18th August via our e-procurement system, Atamis.

This process is being carried out by NHS South, Central and West Commissioning Support Unit (SCW) on behalf of the Commissioner.

Atamis: Interested providers will be able to view this notice via the 'Live Opportunities' list on the e-procurement system, Atamis, available on the following link: https://health-family.force.com/s/Welcome

Additional information: This notice is an information gathering exercise rather than a call for competition in its own right, and therefore publication or response does not commit Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West Integrated Care Board (BOB ICB) or respondents to a future procurement, nor provide any process exemptions or preferential treatment to any parties expressing an interest. The Commissioner is looking to establish what interest there might be in providing such a service from suitably qualified, capable and competent organisations.

The ICB will not be liable for costs incurred by any interested party in participating in this exercise. Interested parties should note that a response to this notice does not guarantee an automatic invitation to any subsequent formal procurement, which the Commissioner will consider in due course.

Atamis: Interested providers will be able to view this notice via the 'Live Opportunities' list on the e-procurement system, Atamis, available on the following link: https://health-family.force.com/s/Welcome

Once you have found the opportunity (via the search function, using the title or reference number), to gain full access to the relevant information and market engagement questionnaire, you will need to click on 'Register interest' - this will take you to the log-in page.

If you are not already registered on the system, you will need to do so before gaining full access to the documentation and to be able to submit market engagement questionnaire.

The services are healthcare services falling within Schedule 3 to the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 ("the Regulations") which are not subject to the full regime of the Regulations, but is instead governed by the "Light Touch Regime" contained within Chapter 3, Section 7 of the Regulations (Regulations 74 to 77).