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A Guide to Winning Healthcare Contracts in the UK

27th April 2020

Healthcare Contracts are in continuous demand throughout the UK and further afield.

The public sector, including the NHS and Local Authorities, are in need of quality healthcare provision. This is especially relevant with the recent COVID-19 pandemic, affecting individuals and organisations globally. 

The range of Healthcare Contracts is vast. Hudson Discover’s new Healthcare Tenders portal brings all of these opportunities together – all in one place! 

How does it work?

Hudson understands the priorities of our clients who provide Healthcare services. They must prioritise their time in order to best care for their patients and service users, leaving less time for them to find and consider opportunities to advance and enhance their businesses. 

They require a service which simplifies the often confusing process of finding tenders relevant to them. Ultimately saving time and money. This is exactly what Healthcare Tenders provides.

For real time saving, with the portal, we send you the latest, relevant opportunities, straight to your inbox. Finding your next Healthcare opportunity really is as easy as that!

The Healthcare Tenders portal is suitable for small and large organisations alike. The nature of healthcare opportunities means that opportunities can range between thousands to millions of pounds.

Public healthcare yearly spending budgets in the UK are in the billions, year on year. 

How is Healthcare Tenders different?

The Healthcare Tenders portal is unique – we don’t rely on CPV codes, which are often confusing and vague. Hudson maintains a dedicated team of opportunity trackers.

Our trackers manually search through thousands of opportunities every day to bring you the most relevant contracts. This means that each opportunity available is current, new and will bring potential value to your organisation.

Opportunities are available through a variety of contracts. In general, there is more demand for public sector opportunities, than private. The public sector is accountable for spending public money, so the procurement process must be transparent and regulated.

Types of Healthcare Contracts

Britain’s NHS Trusts spend approximately £9 billion a year procuring goods and services. The healthcare sector in the UK could not run efficiently without private sector suppliers.

As a result, our Healthcare Tenders portal sees a constant stream of Healthcare contract opportunities, concerning a variety of disciplines, crop up all across the UK. 

An estimated 1 in 3 NHS clinical services tenders are won by private sector contractors.

The NHS is always looking for innovative new partners and they regularly award contracts worth many thousands of pounds to the successful bidders. Types of Healthcare contracts readily available via the public procurement process route include: 

Domiciliary Care Tenders 

As the lifespan of the average UK resident continues to grow, as does the need for domiciliary care. Over recent years the issuing of domiciliary care tenders has risen drastically.

The personal care of the elderly and the disadvantaged and vulnerable is consistently and continuously being outsourced to private organisations. Providing opportunities to care providers of all statures – from small start-ups to large agencies.

Supported Living Tenders

Supported living tenders are extremely varied, from the budget, to scope, to types of the service user; so, you can be sure that there is one that is right for your business.

There are a variety of tenders tailored to the provision of supported living for specific service users. Including, those with learning disabilities, young offenders and asylum seekers.

These demographic groups are typically split into lots within the tender documentation. Enabling your organisation to tender to support the demographic that your organisation specialises in. 

Contract notices will, more often than not, appear in the forms of frameworks or DPS registers.

This is because a Council (for example) needs multiple providers to be able to look after all service users in their designated area. DPS registers are active for several years, and if you are unsuccessful, you can reapply. Frameworks have set deadlines, like single supplier contracts, but multiple suppliers will be successful.

Medical Equipment Tenders 

The scope for contracts in this area is vast. Opportunities can include; provision of hygiene supplies, maintenance of specialist surgical equipment and the supply of first aid equipment.

At the moment the provision of face masks and Personal Protective Equipment is in particularly high demand from buyers. This is due to the recent COVID-19 global pandemic to ensure that front-line staff are protected from infection.

All Medical Equipment Tenders within the public sector are highly regulated. This is because the equipment provided must meet strict and rigorous standards.

Care Services Tenders 

These tenders will mainly appear in the forms of a framework agreement or a DPS register. These enable authorities to award contracts to multiple suppliers; those who rank in the top proportion of applicants or pass a certain benchmark.

There is a wide variety of care provision tenders available to organisations of all sizes. Buying authorities are continuously contracting the provision of social care, mental health and first aid services, to name a few.

How to secure healthcare contracts

Increasingly in the sector works are being contracted in the form of a greater number of smaller contracts, typically handled by local authorities.

Hence, this provides small, even start-up health and social support providers with a golden opportunity to secure healthcare contracts of all varieties. Based on our experiences with the NHS tendering process, we have found the main influences on success in tendering for Healthcare contracts are:

Past Experience 

As is a common theme in the process of tendering for work, your evidence is key. Contracting authorities want to see solid evidence of your experience and competency.

It is especially important to show this regarding the challenges you might face on the contract for which you are bidding. Without firm evidence, including numbers, dates, figures and details of specific challenges, you may struggle.

Indeed, building up a bank of case studies to draw on, is a key first step toward winning healthcare tenders.

However, to counteract lack of organisational experience, we do have Spot Provider Frameworks, which are more geared to the smaller agencies or individuals who deliver healthcare services on a lower-tier delivery basis.

Accreditation & Qualification 

To win healthcare contracts, or to be in with a realistic chance thereof, you have to be able to display appropriate accreditations and qualifications. Otherwise, you will fall at the first hurdle. Tendering authorities need to know that you’re a safe bet.

They need to know that you and your team are a safety-competent and respectful pair of hands. Displaying some basic, internationally recognised qualifications, quality accreditations and information security standards for your organisation will help.

Accreditations such as ISO 9001 and ISO 27001, as well as appropriate NVQs (usually level 3 or above), will typically help you make the first cut in the evaluation procedure. This is desirable but not always essential. 

Quality Responses 

Quality is almost always the most pressing aspect of any healthcare contracts. Pricing is typically of secondary consideration to most tendering authorities within this sector.

We at Hudson Succeed, submit bids on behalf of healthcare providers, which are judged on 100% quality. Meaning price is often not even considered! Tendering authorities are more interested in getting a good quality service that meets the needs of service users fully, rather than a cheap service.

Providing additional evidence as part of your submission will back up your quality responses. For example, providing policies and/or risk assessments, among other items, will inspire further confidence in your organisation’s ability to provide a safe, quality service.

Corporate Social Responsibility 

Social value is becoming more and more prevalent in all tenders, across all business sectors. Buyers want to see you demonstrate how you will bring value to their communities. Typically, this value can be brought through commitments to environmental, social and economic initiatives. 

Authorities tendering healthcare contracts don’t just want to see your organisation’s commitment to your service users.

They also want to see your commitment to the wider picture. Nowadays, it is very likely that you will encounter at least one question about social value or community benefits.

A strong social value response can be the difference between a strong care tender and a weak one. 

How can we help? 

If you don’t see success first time around when bidding for healthcare tenders, don’t be disheartened. Due to the sensitive and challenging nature of this type of work, healthcare tenders are often accompanied by strict evaluation criteria.

A failure may well not be a reflection on your company, but simply the case that a contracting authority has found someone with more specific or niche experience.

Let Healthcare Tenders help you – we will make sure you stay ahead of the game; notifying you of all current Healthcare Contracts and how best to position yourself in an already competitive market. 

Your subscription to Healthcare Tenders includes:

  • Unlimited access to the portal containing all active Healthcare contracts, which you can filter according to budget size, location and keywords (including such terms like, domiciliary, first aid and mental health tenders). 
  • A daily bulletin sent straight to your inbox, containing all the new contract notices our Opportunity Trackers have found that day;
  • A dedicated Account Manager who will deal with all queries relating to Healthcare Tenders or to tendering in general;
  • A free 20-minute phone consultation with our bid writing experts from Hudson Succeed – who can answer specific questions and provide advice and guidance related to your tendering journey.

Below are previous Healthcare contracts sourced on our portal:

Mortuary Facilities and Pathology Services for Walsall, Sandwell and Dudley Councils

Walsall Council e-Tendering- West Midlands- Budget: Undisclosed

F7144 Lot 1 Community Dermatology Extension Notice – North & Mid Hampshire

NHS West Hampshire CCG- South East- Budget: Undisclosed

Provision of Dermatology Services

East of England NHS Collaborative Procurement Hub c/o West Suffolk Hospital- Eastern- Budget: Undisclosed

Framework for the Provision of Dermatology Services

East of England NHS Collaborative Hub- Eastern- Budget: £48,000,000

NHS Framework for the Midlands and East, Branded Medicines — Tranche B plus Cytokine Modulators and other Monoclonal Antibodies

The NHS Commissioning Board (operating under the name of NHS England)- North West- Budget: £754,830,788

Want to receive all the healthcare contracts published daily direct to your inbox?

Get in touch with Hudson Discover today for a free trial / free demo. 

Let us help you to help others. 

Now is the time for Healthcare Tenders