Urgent Community Response Service – NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (Kirklees Health and Care Partnership)

This is a notice to inform the market of the intention to award a contract for the Kirklees Urgent Community Response Service for the population of Kirklees via the Most Suitable Provider Process.<br/>The Health Care Services (Provider Selection Regime) Regulations 2023, Paragraph 10 - The Page 4 to 5 Most Suitable Provider Process is being used to commission this service. <br/>This notice will be live for fourteen (14) days from the date of publication (12/02/26 to 26/02/26). <br/>Urgent community response (UCR) teams provide urgent care to people in their homes which helps to avoid hospital admissions and enable people to live independently for longer.<br/>The service aim for the Kirklees UCR is to provide a crisis community response within 2 hours for all age adults who require a 0–2-hour response (health or social care) to prevent avoidable acute admissions and readmissions by managing the person at home with appropriate ongoing community support. <br/><br/>The service will also provide a 0–2-day rapid response social care reablement service and 1–7-day health follow-up, as required. <br/><br/>All referrals will be triaged by a UCR hub clinician and if clinically indicated will be seen within two hours. People may also be seen later that day, or the next day if required, by the appropriate professional from a multidisciplinary team. <br/><br/>The UCR service will integrate with other services to offer a seamless transfer of care with minimal duplication. This includes on-going care needs, for example with Community Nursing or Social Care.<br/><br/>The service will be available seven days a week from 8am to 8pm.<br/><br/>The objectives for the Kirklees UCR service are to:<br/>

• Provide a rapid personalised patient care response to adults to stabilise crisis events – that is responsive to the person’s needs, including cultural, meeting communication and other adjustments.<br/>
• Deliver interventions that can be safely carried out in the home environment to stabilise the person in their usual place of residence.<br/>
• Work collaboratively with primary care, the ambulance service, community health and social care colleagues, people and their carers/families to facilitate provision of care as close to home as possible in the right setting.<br/>
• Mobilise health and social care pathways around the person with direct access to interventions irrespective of professional or organisational boundaries.<br/>
• Assessment of the person’s health status with a view to effectively addressing their immediate medical needs as swiftly as possible, stabilising their condition, and identifying early opportunity for safe discharge back to primary care, or escalation on to Health and Social Care providers or hospital admission, if necessary. <br/>
• Improve service quality through quality improvement measures and regular service reviews.<br/>
• Ensure an appropriately skilled and competent multi-professional workforce through robust education and training programmes. <br/><br/><br/>Delivery of the Kirklees UCR service is expected to be via a Lead Provider model based on the current UCR Alliance service delivery model.<br/>Commitment to Maintaining Existing Tier 1 Provider Delivery Through Sub Contracting<br/>The ICB currently commissions services through a number of Tier 1 Providers. Under the proposed Lead Provider model, these existing Tier 1 Providers will transition to become sub contractors to the appointed Lead Provider. To ensure continuity of service delivery and avoid disruption to service users, the successful Lead Provider will be required to enter into sub contracting arrangements with all existing Tier 1 Providers for the duration and scope specified by the Authority at contract award, unless otherwise agreed in writing by the ICB.<br/>The Lead Provider is expected to:<br/><br/>1. Enter into and maintain sub contracting arrangements with all existing Tier 1 Providers, as identified by the ICB at contract award.<br/>2. Ensure the continuation of service provision by these existing Tier 1 Providers on terms no less favourable than those currently in place, unless otherwise agreed by the ICB.<br/>3. Work collaboratively with the ICB and existing Tier 1 Providers to support a smooth transition into the Lead Provider model and ensure continuity of service delivery. Additional information: This is a Provider Selection Regime (PSR) intended approach notice. The awarding of this contract is subject to the Health Care Services (Provider Selection Regime) Regulations 2023. For the avoidance of doubt, the provisions of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 do not apply to this award.<br/>The award decision maker will be in accordance with the the ICB's Financial Scheme of Delegation<br/>The intention is to award a contract using the Most Suitable Provider Process.