Health and social work services

Tender description

NHS AG CSU on behalf of NHS England (the Commissioner) invites Expressions of Interest (EOI) from suitably qualified healthcare service providers to provide laboratory services to support the delivery of the HPV primary screening pathway within the NHS Cervical Cancer Screening Programme (NHSCSP). Interested parties are advised to obtain further information regarding this procurement by visiting “Contracts Finder” web portal or by visiting the AG CSU's e-procurement web portal known as Bravo. Note: An expression of interest in response to this Prior Information Notice (PIN) will not automatically entitle your organisation’s involvement in any future procurement exercise that may take place in connection with this PIN. Any procurement conducted as a result of this notice will be advertised as an “Invitation To Tender (ITT)” separately and all organisations wanting to participate will need to respond to the ITT as and when it is published. The service provision will cater for eligible women within the age range of 25 to 64 years. Albeit limited in number, the service provision, will also cover some women aged 24 and half as well as that over 65 years of age. For this service provision the commissioner would like to encourage bids which will deliver value for money and safe and effective laboratory services for eligible women within the NHS Cervical Screening Programme. The service providers will be required to deliver an outcome based high quality service to include provision of the below listed services and the required coordination to deliver these: 1) cervical screening laboratory services; 2) management and provision of the equipment and consumables required to deliver laboratory services to support the delivery of the HPV primary screening pathway within the NHS Cervical Screening Programme, and ensure that this follows NHS Cervical Screening Programme guidelines and recommendations from Public Health England; 3) management of the training and development programmes and processes for all relevant sample takers within the service, ensuring the appropriate skills are maintained to deliver this aspect of the NHS CSP; 4) management of all aspects of transport and logistics in relation to the delivery and appropriate storage of samples received from primary care organisations, including hospitals, general practices, CASH, GUM and colposcopy clinics within a defined footprint; 5) accountability for the safe and coherent delivery of the provider(s) part of the screening pathway whilst ensuring seamless links with other parts of the screening pathway in accordance with the national service specification; 6) working with NHS England to support the development and maintenance of an accurate sample taker database. 7) compliance with all elements of the service specification and national standards. The commissioners would like to encourage innovation and use of technology within service delivery. They are seeking solutions which put eligible women at the centre for this service provision, with the following aims: 1) assist in delivering a high quality NHS Cervical Cancer Screening Programme which is flexible and meets the varying needs of the eligible women; 2) find a provider who is able to work effectively and in partnership with the commissioner(s); 3) establish contracts for services that have been market tested to represent best clinical quality. In order to achieve above aims and objectives the successful bidders should pay attention to following facets: 1) quality; 2) value for money; 3) integration of service; 4) sustainability; 5) continuous Improvement; 6) patient experience. The providers will be required to establish and maintain best practices and use them for continuous service improvement during the term of the contract. The providers will also need to adopt applicable national guidance. It is expected that the procurement opportunity will be advertised in November 18. Contract commencement; As a result of this procurement exercise an agreement will be established with the successful bidder(s) for a period of 5 years with the commissioner having the option to extend the Contract once for a further 2 years. It is anticipated that contracts resultant from this procurement will commence from 1.7.2019 with a view that laboratory service providers will ensure full geographical coverage of HPV primary screening within the NHS Cervical Screening Programme is achieved by December 2019. However, successful provider(s) will have the opportunity to mobilise services from the date of contract award with full geographical coverage of HPV primary screening within the NHS Cervical Screening Programme required across the eligible population within each Lot by December 2019.