To award a five year contract for the Integrated Community Equipment Service (ICES) for Herefordshire for both the council and Herefordshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and to approve the proposed model of operation.

The cabinet member health and adult wellbeing introduced the report. The head of community commissioning and resources and senior commissioning officer attended for this item.

Those in attendance were reminded that the successful bidder would not be named until the procurement process had been completed.

In discussion of the report cabinet members noted that:

·         Herefordshire had an older than average age profile and some growth had been built into the contract specification, the focus of the service would be on older people and trying to keep them independent and at home, although there were some younger people who would access the service;

·         The service provided some equipment such as sensory reminders and medication reminders which could help people with dementia, it was expected that the technology would change in the coming years and that the service would need to respond to this;

·         The budget allowed for some growth but would be robustly managed to ensure that users were re-abled rather than made dependent on equipment and that over-prescribing was avoided;

·         There were a variety of different models in use across the country, Herefordshire was unusual in having a single service for all equipment needs rather than separate streams, this gave more opportunity for recycling of equipment and presented a fuller picture of need and expenditure;

·         Engagement with prescribers would be key to delivery of the service and prescribers with high levels of failed deliveries would be followed up, efforts would also be made to improve return rates when equipment was no longer needed;

·         The equipment was sourced from a range of suppliers and included local suppliers where possible, particularly for specialist items;

·         A self-purchase portal would be available for those people who preferred to buy a new or customised item rather than have a recycled one, it would also be available to self-funders with help and advice to meet their own identified needs but no follow up support;

·         Much of the complexity of the contract was in the way in which equipment was prescribed, there would be clinical input from an occupational therapist and input from a business manager to support prescribers and monitor spending and performance.

Group leaders were invited to express the views of their group. Improvements to the service were welcomed and it was felt that these would enhance the service and help to address delays in transfers of care. It was suggested that the weighting of environmental considerations in the procurement scoring should have been higher and that this might need to be reviewed for future procurement. The head of community commissioning explained that more questions had been included in the procurement this time, including the question on environmental considerations, and that the weighting on that question had not made a significant difference in the outcome.

It was agreed that:

(a)  a five year contract for the delivery of the Integrated Community Equipment Service is awarded to Supplier A outlined in Appendix 1 at a total cost of no more than £9m over the lifetime of the contract.