Medical equipments, pharmaceuticals and personal care products

Tender description

Torbay Council (Council), in partnership with South Devon and Torbay Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), commission a Joint Community Equipment Service (JCES), providing simple and complex aids for daily living, along with minor adaptations for people with health and social care needs living in Torbay (or who are registered with a Torbay GP). In our future retendering of this service we are looking to innovate and further improve the service we offer, making best use of resources and providing better outcomes for adults/children to remain independent within their community. Including looking differently at how we combine aids and adaptation services to provide a more joined-up offer and how this can be enhanced by working in partnership with others. This is partly driven by our involvement in the Devon Sustainability and Transformation Partnership (STP) and emerging Integrated Care System (ICS) for the county. Working in partnership the Devon STP states that in future, “our main focus will be on helping more people to live healthily and happily at home, with support and care from the NHS and social care services.” This is supported by a number of strategic priorities, including: — enhancing self-care and community resilience, — integrating and improving community services and care in people’s homes, — delivering modern, safe and sustainable services. By delivering on the priorities, the Devon STP seeks to realise benefits, including: — more people living independently in resilient communities, — people receiving joined-up care and support between services and organisations, — more care being available in the community and people’s homes. Our experience of working together within the Devon STP and integrating care at a local level is important and means we can be responsive to people’s needs, making good use of local assets and resources. The benefits we have achieved from working together locally are enhanced by the advantages of being part of a wider Devon system and the resilience, sharing of good practice and economies of scale that this has to offer. Core to the emerging approach is the development of integrated strategic commissioning, which can act across health and social care. The 3 local authorities (Devon County Council, Plymouth City Council and Torbay Council) have been active in this approach to date; sharing elements of commissioning, collaborating in our shared geographies and delegating significant investment into joint commissioning arrangements with our 2 CCGs. NEW Devon CCG and South Devon and Torbay CCG are working through a formal process of applying to become one CCG from April 2019, which will commission health services across the whole of Devon. Torbay Council believes the partnership model can contribute to improved service delivery, better outcomes for adults and children, and the opportunity to realise efficiencies through shared or merged service elements. Torbay Council will be working with Plymouth City Council and Devon County Council to consider the benefits of closer collaboration for the provision of aids and adaptations, enabling greater opportunity for service innovation, sharing knowledge, expertise and capacity in order to jointly realise benefits for service users and manage costs. This cross-border work (covering a wider geography and population) could allow all 3 authorities to use their combined purchasing power to work with economic operators to identify the best aids and adaptations solutions for people, standardise products and set clear expectations on quality. This work is expected to result in an expected start date for a new Torbay Service of 1.4.2021 or 1.4.2022, depending on the geographic scope of the service. To enable the completion of this work and the undertaking of the required tender process, Torbay Council intends to award its current economic operator a new 12-month contract to run until 31.3.2021, with an option to extend for a further 12 months in the event this is required for an STP wide tender.