This story was first published in digitalhealth.net

East London NHS Foundation Trust (ELFT) has been announced as the new provider for Bedfordshire’s Community Health Services.
Commissioners Bedfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group, Central Bedfordshire Council and Bedford Borough Council have confirmed ELFT as the preferred bidder to provide the services for the next five years.
The annual value of the contract is £39 million and covers a range of Community Health Services for adults and children.
For adults this includes specialist nursing, community geriatricians, rapid response and rehabilitation and step-up/step-down beds.
For children this includes the Health Visiting and School Nursing services, community paediatricians, the Looked After Children’s Health Team and allied health professionals such as speech and language therapists.
Navina Evans, trust chief executive, said: “This is fantastic news for the Trust, for staff and for patients. The trust will deliver services in partnership with Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust. We will provide the adult services and CCS will be subcontracted to provide children’s services. The new contract is in addition to our existing Bedfordshire services.
“We will continue to provide adult, older adult mental health and learning disability services, IAPT services, CAMHS, adult rehabilitation and recovery services and Path 2 Recovery (P2R) adult drug and alcohol treatment services.
“This is an exciting time for the trust and we look forward to welcoming our new Bedfordshire colleagues.”
Andrew Edwards, clinical lead for community health services, Bedfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group, said: “ELFT is a leading provider of Community Health Services and provided assurance of its track record for delivering services to a high standard and its ability to drive change, transform services and achieve excellence.
“The new contract means patients will receive care that is centred on their needs, co-ordinated through integrated multi-disciplinary teams and delivered within the community closer to home. As part of our work to develop the new model of care we engaged service users and carers. In addition, users, carers and Healthwatch representatives met the bidders to provide feedback on their ideas, helping them to fine-tune the plans they submitted as part of the procurement process.
“ELFT demonstrated that it puts the service user at the heart of everything it does and ensures that they have a strong voice in continuous service development.”
This story was first published in digitalhealth.net
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