Dynamic Purchasing System to provide Extra Vehicle and Staff Capacity to deliver Non-emergency Patient Transport Services

The County of Somerset covers a large geographical area.

It has a dispersed, mainly rural population of approximately 540 000 people, with only one in four of its residents living in one of its three largest towns; Taunton; Yeovil; and Bridgwater.

Somerset has two acute trusts within its borders (Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust and Yeovil District Hospital NHS Foundation Trust) as well as 13 community hospitals (run by Somerset Partnership NHS Foundation Trust) and 75 GP practices.

The provision of Non-Emergency Patient Transport (NEPT) services for Somerset is delivered by different suppliers under contracts awarded through the Somerset Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) for use by Acute and Non Acute hospital Trusts, Community Hospitals and other non-acute care establishments and GP Practices within Somerset.

Transport is provided depending on patient needs and eligibility for the NEPT service together with the supplier’s capacity and availability to supply service.

The DPS will be available for use by all public sector bodies within Somerset, the CCG, Community Hospitals and other Care Providers and other organisations approved by the CCG.

All call off contracts will be administered by Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust through the e-Tendering Portal which can be accessed via https://procontract.due-north.com.

The DPS is being tendered by Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust (the Trust) to provide additional NEPT services to those already provided by the CCG.

It is intended to use the DPS to provide additional patient transport vehicle and staff capacity including, but not limited to the following: - during periods of winter /summer pressures, - discharges from acute hospital settings - for patients who have a regular transport requirement between care providers.

1.7 The DPS will run for 10 years and the service is primarily to provide fixed term contracts rather than one off ad hoc journeys and each will be specified within any call off contracts available through the DPS.

1.8 For each call-off contract under the DPS, the Authority will apply the award criteria listed in the invitation to confirm interest.

The Authority intends to formulate the award criteria more precisely in each ITT.