NHS Sheffield CCG : Prescription Order Line Service PIN

Prescription Order Line (POL) Prior Information Notice

In line with the NHS Long Term Plan and its national directive to deliver care at place by integrating local organisations together, NHS Sheffield Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) seeks to appoint an organisation with existing links, to provide a city-wide repeat prescription telephone ordering service.

In order to optimise the use of medicines (NICE NG5), the Medicines Optimisation Team at the CCG introduced a telephone repeat prescription order service staffed by a trained NHS medicines management team. This followed work in Coventry reporting a 6% reduction in items prescribed with associated reductions in prescribing costs.

The CCG established a POL service in 2016 now supporting 13 general practices. Currently, delivery is by a team of Medicines Optimisation Support Assistants with oversight from Pharmacy Technicians.

The provider will need detailed knowledge of Sheffield primary care in order to deliver the current provision (practice population circa 113,000 patients) and demonstrate that they can expand city-wide by engaging with the remaining practices and gaining their agreement to opt into the service. They will need to recognise this is a list-based practice service and that access to practice data will be required for service delivery.

The CCG will assist in an advisory capacity for the first 2 months of the contract.

The provider will need the following skills, knowledge, expertise and experience:

• Ability to work in partnership with the CCG
• Methods for gaining an ongoing understanding of patient experience, including equality monitoring
• Knowledge of medicines including ordering and supply issues
• Data collection mechanisms
• Operational service delivery within a primary care setting
• Ability to recruit, train and retain staff
• Ability to develop and scale up services
• System resilience and adequate business continuity to ensure robust service delivery at scale

As the provider may be required to TUPE existing Sheffield-based staff (7 people, 5.92 WTE), premises will be required in Sheffield.

Contract:

The CCG is seeking to appoint a provider for this Service; a preferred commencement date would be at the latest 1 February 2021.

The contract will be for 3 years with an option to extend for a further 2 years, subject to agreement by both parties.

The contract mechanism will be in the form of block contract with agreed activity levels and aligned KPIs including Timeliness, Quality, Cost, Waste reduction, and Service level.

There is an anticipated contract value from £153,000 per annum. This will increase commensurate with the number of participating practices.

Additional information:

The CCG are not liable for any costs incurred by those expressing an interest in this PIN or, for any future tendering activity.

Please submit written expressions of interest, maximum 1,500 words.

Responses should include reference to:

• Partnership working with the CCG and general practice stakeholders in Sheffield;
• detailed knowledge of their patient services and needs of the sector;
• Patient engagement in set up and service delivery.

Please send your submission through the NHS Sourcing portal by the deadline of noon on the 5th November 2020. The information you provide to NHS Sheffield CCG will be to assess interest in the market. Dependent upon the response to this PIN the authority will determine if this requirement will form the basis of a competitive procurement process. If a competitive procurement is to take place the authority will inform those organisations who have registered an interest as described above with more information. The information to be provided by SCCG will include, but not be limited to the type of procurement process, the timescales, TUPE information and the evaluation criteria for any future procurement process.

For the avoidance of doubt the PIN is being advertised as a ''PQQ'' due to the limitations of the NHS Sourcing system. To access the PIN documentation for this opportunity, please go to www.nhssourcing.co.uk

If you have not accessed the portal before you will need to register by clicking on "Register Here". Once you have logged into the website, click on the link "PQQs Open to All Suppliers" in the Supplier Area box. This PIN will be listed here as pqq_29547. Click on the ''PQQ'' Title, and then on the green button "Express Interest". By doing this, you will have invited yourself to participate in the ''PQQ''. This enables you to download any Buyer Attachments, send and receive Messages with the NHS South Yorkshire Procurement Service, and respond to the PIN.

Click on the ''PQQ'' Title, and then on the green button "Express Interest". By doing this, you will have invited yourself to participate in the ''PQQ''. This enables you to download any Buyer Attachments, send and receive Messages with the NHS South Yorkshire Procurement Service, and respond to the PIN.