West Suffolk Hospital and Ipswich Hospitals look to take on community health from Serco

West Suffolk Hospital is joining Ipswich Hospital and Norfolk Community Health and Care NHS Trust to deliver community health care in the county.

The three have begun the initial stages of a bid to clinical commissioning groups after Serco decided not to apply for the new Suffolk Community Healthcare contract.

The outsourcing company took on community health in 2012 in a £140million contract but had missed targets initially and overspent on the services it provided.

The Ipswich and East Suffolk and West Suffolk clinical commissioning groups are responsible for buying in community health care following the abolition of former primary care trusts.

Community health providing district nurses, speech therapists and community hospital services were previously run by the NHS.

A spokesman for West Suffolk Hospital NHS Foundation Trust confirmed this week that they were part of the bid.

In April 2014 Serco revealed that it would lose almost £18 million on three of its NHS contracts including Suffolk and in August last year it was reported it had decided to withdraw from clinical health services.

The hospitals and care trust have submitted a pre-qualification response to the CCGs and are now preparing for the formal publication of the invitation to tender.

Wendy Tankard, chief contracts officer for the commissioning groups said: “During this procurement process to identify a new community health service provider, it is important to adhere to the principles of fairness and equity. This means we cannot discuss details of those organisations which have expressed an interest in bidding for the contract.

“Until the new provider is identified and through to the end of the current contract patients will continue to receive safe, high quality care that meets their needs. We expect to be able to announce the preferred provider by May 2015 with services being delivered from October.” 2015.”