NHS: Contracts

(asked on 28th April 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will provide details of where the website which NHS England is required to maintain under regulation 4(1) of The National Health Service (Procurement, Patient Choice and Competition) (No. 2) Regulations 2013 can be found; and if he will take steps to ensure that a record of contracts entered into by NHS England with independent providers pursuant to paragraph 3(2)(a) of The Exercise of Commissioning Functions by the National Health Service Commissioning Board (Coronavirus) Directions 2020 will be published on that website, including in relation to each contract the same details as required by regulation 9(2) of those regulations.


Answered by
Edward Argar Portrait
Edward Argar
Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
This question was answered on 12th May 2020

Under the Exercise of Commissioning Functions by the National Health Service Commissioning Board (Coronavirus) Directions 2020, NHS England’s arrangements with independent sector hospital operators relates to the delivery of some or all of the following services for NHS patients:

- Inpatient respiratory care to COVID-19 patients needing oxygen therapy, non-invasive ventilation and mechanical ventilation in intensive care;

- Urgent, time-dependent National Health Service elective care services, to help maintain priority elective and cancer pathways as the pressure builds from COVID-19 related admissions;

- Diagnostic capacity, in collaboration with the NHS, to help maintain urgent priority elective and cancer pathways;

- Inpatient non-elective care to NHS patients to help free up bed capacity in NHS hospitals; and

- For those operators to make their staff, facilities and equipment available for deployment as necessary to support the NHS response to COVID-19 in those and other settings as required.

NHS England has also entered into contracts to secure and flexibly co-ordinate additional mobile CT scanner capacity across England during the national COVID-19 crisis.

Independent sector hospital providers will be reimbursed for their operating and support costs incurred in providing the required services, at cost, verified on an open-book basis. Payment under the CT scanning contracts is on the basis of an agreed day rate per manned scanner.

The basis of payment in both cases is England-wide and has been negotiated by NHS England centrally.

NHS England will ensure that details of the contracts it has entered into under the 2020 Directions are published on the GOV.UK website in accordance with regulation 4(1) of The National Health Service (Procurement, Patient Choice and Competition) (No. 2) Regulations 2013 at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/contracts-finder

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