Hi all,
Would be grateful for any help around bidding for a new primary care service.Does any GP/practice have any plans we could look at as we have been short listed to provide a primary care service for drug and alcohol users. I would be very grateful for any advice memebers can give us in impressing the PCT with our bid. We have stiff competition from the priory group so would welcome any plans/ideas. Many thanks
Caroline

Hi Caroline

I think we need a bit more information about your service, the spec you have been given and the political and historical background. I have quite a lot of information of this sort (not actual bids as they are confidential) but lots of service configurations, specs etc. Also its unusual in England to have a joint drug and acohol spec so that might be harder to come by.

basic rules for bidding

meet the spec, don't put in any irrelevant information and clearly explain how you are going to do it. Simple clear and relevant.

Hi Jim,
Many thanks for your quick reply. With regard to our arrangements we are in an affluent borough who don't like to think they have a drug problem.However our main sort of profile is that we have a lot of alcohol clients more so. We have 7 practices providing shared care under a basic LES, and now 2 of those practices would like to develop to run this more specialist service in primary care more like a PMS. As it is a new thing for us to bid for this we would be grateful for sort of salient points that the PCT look for in runing a service like this in primary care.We have three GP's in practice and are looking at a joint bid with another practice to cover the other side of our borough so there is local coverage. I think with regard to alcohol this has thrown us as we are not sure how to evaluate this in terms of payment as we have to incorporate into our service.I think the PCT idea is to have some main support in primary care for alcohol misuse as currently we have no LES for alcohol due to difficulties around payments etc and recording of this info. Many thanks Jim...hope this helps.
bye

Hi Caroline

I think I could give you some advice on this. Still not quite clear how the alcohol and drug elements fit together. Do you have a spec from the PCT as to what the paramaters of the service are or is this somethiong you are putting in under Practice based commissioning?
I think you should e-mail me off line with a few more of these details and I'll gice it my best shot - also let me know where you work as I have a working knowledge of most of the country
email me on smmgp@freeuk.com (thats my personal email believe it or not)

bear in mind that I'm off to our conference in Brighton tommorrow so I wont be able to give it any more thought until next week