London trust seeks £289m transformation

Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust has gone out to tender for a strategic partner to manage its transformation project in a contract worth up to £289m, of which £21m will go on its IT strategy.

The trust wants a partner to work on its five year transformation project in order to simplify, streamline and automate internal processes.

The strategic partner may be required to manage the trust’s capital investment of £21.38m on IT and the contract is worth between £85m and £289m over five years.

Ian Millar, director of finance and corporate resources at the trust, told EHI that the programme will enable the trust to become more responsive and competitive “by developing new models of care, through making greater use of technology and by reducing our operating costs.”

Some traditional ways of delivering care have now become outdated and inefficient, creating the risk of a poorer patient experience and wasted resources,” he said.

“We are embracing the challenge of providing the same high quality, compassionate care that we are known for in new and innovative ways, so that we can deliver greater outcomes at the lowest possible cost.”

The core requirements set out in the tender includes IM&T delivery management; infrastructure; software development, user application support and development, business systems training; service desk; and application and data processing services.

The trust’s IT strategy centres around the £21.38m investment in improvements and innovations over the next five years, which includes developing telehealth and deploying mobile devices to staff working in the community.

The tender says the trust wants to provide “an ‘enabled service’ powered by technology” and a new organisational model that is more responsive and adaptable to change.

The trust wants a partner who will deliver a set of transactional services. As well as IT, these include operational procurement, financial systems and support, business informatics report production services, payroll services and debt control.

The trust told EHI that the trust has a number of “relatively small scale outsourced contracts” at the moment, but that this piece of work represents a “new and exciting future for the organisation.”

The trust hopes to complete the tender process by April 2015.