£5bn commissioning support tender out

NHS England has released the tender for a commissioning support services framework worth £3 billion – £5 billion.

The new four-year framework, announced last October, will allow clinical commissioning groups and other health service bodies to purchase commissioning support services on a 'call-off' basis.

It is divided into three lots. Lot one, ‘end-to-end commissioning support services’, includes IT support and business intelligence. Lot two is further divided into two sub lots; ‘medicines management and optimisation’ and ‘individual funding request case management’.

The maximum number of potential providers to be shortlisted at pre-qualification questionnaire stage is 30 for Lot 1 and 20 each in the Lot 2 sub-lots.

IT services available via the framework include: managed ICT infrastructure services; disaster recovery services; data hosting; systems integration and interoperability; service desk and desktop support; remote access services; and telephony and mobile device management.

Business intelligence includes: decision support; dashboards; risk stratification; monitoring and alert system; and workflow management systems. Business analytics services include predictive modelling and benchmarking.

The framework is open for use by NHS England and all the bodies it hosts as well as “any other health service body as defined at section 9 of the National Health Service Act 2006”, which includes; CCGs, NHS trusts; the Care Quality Commission; National Institute for Health Care Excellence; and the Health and Social Care Information Centre

The current spend by CCGs and other commissioners on external commissioning support services is estimated at just over £700m per annum.

“On the assumption that organisations entitled to call-off contracts from this framework agreement will in many cases want to put in place medium to long term contracts (typically of an indicative period of five years) with each provider selected following a further competition, there is the potential that between £ 3 – 5 billion of business could be sourced through the framework agreement during its four-year duration,” the tender says.

The introduction to the draft NHS England document says that NHS England conducted a survey over the summer, which showed that that 76% of CCG respondents supported the development of a lead provider framework.

A number of commissioning support units have decided to merge or work collaboratively in order to become ‘lead providers’. The framework will be optional and will be launched alongside procurement information that outlines other choices available to CCGs and the support available.

Requests to participate in the framework are due by 5 May.