Exclusive: CCG planning for single £340m MCP contract

The All Together Better Sunderland multispecialty community provider model brings together health services, social care and the voluntary sector to keep vulnerable patients out of hospital.

While five city-wide integrated teams had been working on an agreement between the different providers on separate contracts, Sunderland Clinical Commissioning Group is now planning to bring the vanguard under a single contract.

To pave the way for this, leaders across the region are exploring how to set up a single entity to hold that contract and provide services, with the CCG hoping it will be live by April 2018.

Sunderland CCG deputy chief officer Debbie Burnicle said the aim is to have one provider holding the contract to run the MCP.

She said: “Our preference would be a new entity; it cannot just be more of the same. Our ambition is to have the new entity secured and in place by April 2018.

“We still need to come to a view about the best way to procure and commissioning that entity.”

The MCP provides rapid home response services from teams made up of community nurses, social workers, GPs and volunteers to prevent people being admitted to hospital.

The new provider will be commissioned through a joint contract between the CCG and Sunderland city council worth an estimated £340m.

A statement of intent to create a single provider for the MCP has been signed by the vanguard project’s partners:

• Sunderland CCG;
• Sunderland city council;
• Sunderland GP Alliance;
• City Hospitals Sunderland Foundation Trust;
• South Tyneside FT;
• Northumberland, Tyne and Wear FT;
• Age UK; and
• Sunderland Care and Support – a local authority trading company providing adult social care for the council.

The senior leadership group, representing leaders from the different organisations, will produce a business case on what form the new MCP provider will take. There is no date for when this will be published.

Ms Burnicle said 2017-18 will be a “shadow year” for the new care model, where leaders can establish how the single contract will function across the different providers.

She added: “We have existing contracts with existing providers who have agreed to work together, but it’s voluntary. It cannot continue to be a good will arrangement.

“We are trying to use [2017-18] as our shadow year where we will try to change the business, although not the care.”

Although the CCG wants to commission the MCP as one entity, Ms Burnicle said this will not stop the provider subcontracting parts of the care to other organisations.