A new contract to provide Community Urgent Treatment Centres and Out of Hours Home Visiting (OOHHV) service has been awarded to PELC (Partnership of East London Co-operatives) by the Barking and Dagenham, Havering and Redbridge Clinical Commissioning Groups (BHR CCGs).
PELC will be working jointly with NELFT (North East London Foundation Trust) to deliver the new five-year service, which we expect to be in operation from 1 July 2020.
The four new community urgent treatment centres will be based at Queen’s and King George’s Hospitals, Barking Community Hospital and Harold Wood Polyclinic. Patients can either walk in, or book an appointment by calling NHS 111. Appointments will also be available at the eight primary care access hubs, depending on opening hours and clinical need.
The procurement is the first stage of implementing the new model for community urgent care services that was agreed following a 14-week public consultation in 2018.
We are currently planning the communications and engagement work that we will undertake ahead of the new service, particularly to explain changes to the way local people can access services. We will be working with Healthwatch and the new providers to plan and deliver this, and will keep you updated.
This comes after a robust procurement exercise for the service which was carried out in the best interests of patients, in accordance with the NHS rules on procurement, choice and competition.
We are now working with PELC (Partnership of East London Co-operatives), the successful bidder, to finalise the contract.
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