North East Essex considers terminating contract with CSU

Board papers from the CCG’s January governing body meeting state that following concerns emerging about “the delivery of services” by the CSU, an “agreement has already been reached to terminate three services”. These are: business intelligence, contracting and individual funding requests.

A review by the CCG found that in these areas “CSU performance was detrimentally affecting the capacity to manage CCG business and deliver statutory functions, or creating a potential reputational/patient safety risk, and also created a risk to the delivery of service strategies”.

The paper continues: “Termination of the whole agreement at September 2014 has been considered as an option.”

However, it notes that “in the context of the national procurement activity, acting unilaterally will mean that the CCG will be required to undertake this work only months before a new framework agreement is available”. 

“This will affect the range and quality of supplier response, and require the CCG to use considerably more capacity and resource in the procurement than would be necessary under the framework. There are also indications that full cost release would not be achieved at termination.”

It said the future of commissioning support in the area was “still under discussion internally”.

Central Eastern CSU and North East Essex CCG both declined to comment.

In October last year HSJ learned that a small minority of CCGs had pulled services from CSUs.

Central Eastern lost a contract for £4m worth of services it provided to East and North Hertfordshire CCG in May 2013. The CCG brought communications, patient involvement, finance planning, payroll and human resources, performance and activity reporting and contract monitoring and management in house.

The CSU also lost £900,000 worth of services from Herts Valleys CCG around quality assurance, service redesign, and choose and book.

Earlier this week Central Eastern CSU announced it was entering into a formal alliance with Central Southern CSU to bolster their bids to be accredited onto NHS England’s “lead provider framework”, currently being developed to support the procurement of support services.