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Health care provider brings procurement challenge over contract award by CCG

Health care provider Circle has launched a High Court challenge against Rushcliffe Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) over its award of an elective surgery contract to an NHS trust that Circle claims is in a poor financial state.

Circle previously held the contract for 11 years and argues in a case lodged with the court that the contract was unfairly awarded to Nottingham University NHS Trust (NUH). It seeks an order to set this aside and award the work to Circle, which came second. It also wants unspecified financial compensation.

It said the trust’s financial position was so poor that it was “neither credible nor sustainable” of it to claim that it could deliver the 18% saving on the £64m a year contract that formed part of its bid.

The contract also covers 17 other health bodies, mainly in the East Midlands, and services including gynaecology, colorectal surgery and dermatology.

Court papers showed Circle’s objections include tender scoring, the trust’s financial standing and state aid.

It said NUH lost £20.9m in 2016-17 and £2.3m in 2017-18 and had an operating deficit of £30m at October 2018 which left it unable to call on the NHS provider sustainability fund “because of failure to meet financial and performance targets”.

Circle said the CCG had failed to explain adequately how NUH passed the procurement’s financial standing test and had failed to provide other evaluation information.

A Circle Health spokesman said: “We believe the continuity of quality services at the Nottingham Treatment Centre is at risk following a flawed procurement. The local healthcare system is already under significant pressure and unrealistic proposed savings are not in patients’ interests. 

“Circle are currently treating approximately 72,000 patients, including those with complex cancer pathways, and we do not want to see this jeopardised by short-term closures or service disruption.”

He said the company had offered to continue its work until the dispute was resolved. 

Amanda Sullivan, Chief Officer of the six CCGs in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, said: “We remain committed to securing the best outcome for patients of the Nottingham Treatment Centre.

“As healthcare commissioners we will always put the needs of local people first in decisions about healthcare, and we have issued our response to the legal challenge from Circle Nottingham Ltd. It’s disappointing that this challenge has led to a delay to the conclusion of this process, but we hope to be able to award the contract to our preferred bidder, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH), whilst we work to resolve these issues.

“Our priority is to ensure timely mobilisation of services in order to mitigate any impact on patients. As a health system we have set ourselves challenging targets for improving local healthcare services through collaborative partnership. The Nottingham Treatment Centre will play an important role in this partnership going forward. We look forward to confirming the contract award in order to ensure patients have access to high quality elective services at the Treatment Centre.”

NUH have been approached for comment.