Provision of Simulated Patient Services for Kent and Medway Medical School

CPV: Health training services · Technical training services

Procedure method

Award procedure without prior publication of a call for competition

Legal basis

CELEX · 32014L0024 Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (Directive 2014/24/EU)

Procurement category

Services

Notice status

Awarded without competition

Procurement threshold

Unspecified in notice

Regulatory regime

Standard

Commercial structure

Stand-alone contract (no framework)

Competition type

Direct award (no call for competition)

GPA / WTO covered

Unspecified in notice

Recurring procurement

Unspecified in notice

First published

31 May 2023, 15:02 BST

Last source update

31 May 2023, 15:02 BST

FTS notice number

2023/S 000-015419

Classification (CPV)

Health training servicesTechnical training services

Delivery area

UK

Official registry OCID

ocds-h6vhtk-03d0aa Find a Tender

Why no open competition

The procurement falls outside the scope of application of the directive

Published justification

The Public Contracts Regulations 2015 allow contracting authorities to proceed with the negotiated procedure without prior publication of a contract notice under a specific set of circumstances. The University considers that the use of the negotiated procedure without prior publication of a contract under Regulation 32 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 is justified for the following reasons:

Circumstance 2

(article 32(2) (b))

"Where the works, supplies or services can be supplied only by a particular economic operator for any of the following reasons:-

(i) the aim of the procurement is the creation or acquisition of a unique work of art or artistic performance

(ii) competition is absent for technical reasons,

(iii) the protection of exclusive rights, including intellectual property rights,

1. Only suitable provider identified

When a new medical school is announced by government and local universities, this triggers a huge amount of news and social media posts and news reports. KMMS was no different, esp since this is a game changer for Kent's struggling healthcare force and challenges to recruit and retain staff to this coastal county. When the school was established and some initial staff was recruited, myself and Dr Katherine Joekes (who has left KMMS now), investigated for suitable companies that could support us in the provision and development of simulated patients (SPs or actors) for clinical skills training and assessments. This is a core and critical aspect of training medical doctors at UK medical schools.

We spoke to some local acting companies who were based in Kent and had some experience of this space. One was a small local acting company who did some work with the Kent school of pharmacy, but when we explained the nature of our needs, the informed us that they are not able to set-up and run an SP recruitment and training process at all, they were just local freelance actors working informally with Kent and could not help us.

Dr Joekes, who came to KMMS from a London medical school and had lots of connection with London based agencies providing such services to the London based medical schools. Contacted these agencies to ask if they are perhaps interested in supporting us as a new school in Canterbury, Kent. Unfortunately, they were too busy with supporting the 5 medical schools in London and did not have the capacity to work outside London. Since we needed local Kent recruitment and training support locally to Canterbury.

We then found Peel Role play who was prepared to support us locally, even though they were based in Yorkshire, but they had experience in supporting local schools across the UK. By this point the pandemic hit and the school needed to also run some skills sessions and we contracted them on a 3-year basis initially.

2. Regulator and accreditation risks

The School has now built up a very strong working relationship with Peel Roleplay over the past 2.5 years and they have delivered a very good service on all fronts. They have built a large pool of local SP actors which we are using for all our curriculum skills sessions that needs SPs and we use them in every clinical skills exam. We as a school are extremely reliant on this service to deliver our curriculum and to achieve our General Medical Council (GMC) accreditation as a medical school in the 24/25 academic year. The GMC is the regulator in the UK for medical education. We also face (like all other UK medical schools) the national GMC medical licensing assessment (MLA) in 2024-25 year, and this is a major risk for a new medical school in terms of how our students perform. We are therefore very keen to continue working with Peel Roleplay in achieving this critical strategic goal for KMMS (perform well in MLA and receive full and final accreditation as a medical school that can award primary medical qualifications).

• Peel RoleplayAwarded supplierGB-COH: 07576465 Peel Roleplay, Pinetum, Broughton Hall, Skipton,, North yorkshire, Yorkshire & Humber, BD23 3AEContact emailShow contact details

No document links were published on the notice.