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NECS successfully join Commissioning Support Lead Provider Framework

NHS North of England Commissioning Support (NECS) has been named as one of seven successful CSUs to join NHS England’s procurement framework. NECS were successful in all three of their bids to join the Lead Provider Framework (LPF) to provide end to end commissioning support (Lot 1), medicines management (Lot 2A) and supporting continuing healthcare and individual funding requests (Lot 2B).

Stephen Childs, Managing Director of NECS said of the result “We are delighted. To put this into perspective, we were competing against the very best of the private sector as well as our fellow CSUs and NHS England had made it quite clear that the bar would be set very high. This is a fantastic achievement and a further demonstration of how far, in such a short time that we have progressed.

“By securing a place on the framework NECS is on track towards realising our primary objective which is to retain our current customers business whilst also achieving growth, making our offer available to a host of new customers across the public sector, not just Clinical Commissioning Groups.”

NHS England developed the Lead Provider Framework to enable CCGs, NHS England and other customers to source some or all of their commissioning support needs, ranging from transactional back office support services to more bespoke services that support local and large scale transformational change projects.

The framework has been developed with local clinical commissioners who asked for a simpler and less costly process for choosing the support they need. In February 2014, NHS England invited organisations to come forward who were capable of bringing together end to end support services, such as back office finance and HR, GP IT services, contracting, engagement and business intelligence. The Invitation to Tender stage concluded last month.

Bob Ricketts, Director of Commissioning Support Services at NHS England said “I’m delighted about the range of quality providers that have made it onto the framework. I genuinely believe that these organisations have brought together the best services in the market to offer commissioners everything they need to deliver the vision of the Five Year Forward View.”

Providers were finally selected after a two month ITT assessment by a panel of over thirty representatives from CCGs, NHS England’s area teams, NHS Improving Quality, NHS Right Care, and other subject matter experts.

NHS England is encouraging CCGs to use the framework to re-procure their current Service Level Agreements with CSUs, many of which run out in April 2016 and must be openly tendered before then. NHS England have put in place free procurement and legal support to reduce the burden on CCGs so that the process is as quick and simple as possible and they can get the best value for money from bidders using the volume based discounts on offer.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Christina Pounder .