National Early Inflammatory Autoimmune Diseases Audit

The contract is expected to initially be delivered for NHS-funded care in England and Wales, and publicly funded care in Jersey for a period of three years, at a maximum total budget of up to £930,380.40 GBP including VAT and £775,317.00 GBP excluding VAT. Bids exceeding this limit will be rejected. There is potential to extend the contract for up to two additional years as well as the option to include other Devolved Nations and/or Crown Dependencies, aspirational measures and discretionary inflationary uplifts (all of which will be defined in the service specification).
The maximum budget ‘core’ value of £930,380.40 GBP including VAT and £775,317.00 GBP excluding VAT, excludes the potential two-year extension and aspirational intent which will be included in the service specification at point of tender, meaning the ceiling value has the potential to be higher.
Due to the unknowns in advance of holding the premarket engagement session, it is currently expected that the extension value will be a two-year pro rata of the core three- year funding, estimated at £516,878.00 excluding VAT.
This proposed extension value may also include pro rata funding of any additional aspirational measures invoked in the first three years of the contract. For example: If an aspirational annual requirement costing £500,000 per year is invoked in year three, then the extension funding (if the aspirational measure is continued) will be the above figures plus the additional £500,000 per year.
Further to this funding, the final specification will contain a list of aspirational measures which will be expected to be modified into the contract should the need and funding become available. The aspirational intent value, excluding the potential two- year extension, is unknown at point of drafting this notice, so, an estimated value of £7,000,000 excluding VAT is applied to form the maximum ceiling value AT POINT OF DRAFTING THIS NOTICE. This aspirational intent has the potential to be invoked fully, partially, or not at all, and the Authority cannot guarantee that the successful supplier will be required to do any of the aspirational measures that will be listed in the final specification.
The role of a national clinical audit is to stimulate healthcare improvement and reduce unwarranted variation through the provision of high-quality information on the organisation, delivery and outcomes of healthcare, together with tools and support to enable healthcare providers and other audiences to make best use of this information. Outcomes are benchmarked against national guidance and standards e.g. quality standards from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), and those from other established professional and patient sources. Successful national audits are those where the individuals providing the data can also improve the system, and there is a shared understanding of what good care looks like.
The National Early Inflammatory Autoimmune Diseases Audit, previously the National Early Inflammatory Arthritis Audit (NEIAA) was established in 2013 and since 2017 has been delivered by the British Society for Rheumatology (BSR) - https://www.rheumatology.org.uk/
The overarching aim is to stimulate improvements in care for patients by measuring variations in quality, experience and outcomes. During this contract period, the successful tenderer will need to build on the achievements of the audit to date and enhance the ability for the audit to be used for healthcare improvement. Data is most useful locally for healthcare improvement when its provision to clinical teams is timely, the data is refreshed regularly and appropriate tools, support and guidance accompany the data outputs. The intent is for all these features of the audit to be implemented and improved during the period of this contract.
The NEIAA should conform to the overarching aims and objective of all NCAPOP audits
National clinical audits are expected to:
a.Develop a robust, high-quality audit designed around key quality indicators likely to best support local and national quality improvement
b.Achieve, articulate and maintain close alignment with relevant NICE national guidance and quality standards throughout the audit, as appropriate
c.Enable improvements through the provision of timely, high-quality data that compares providers of healthcare, and comprises an integrated mixture of named Trust or Health Board, Integrated Care System (ICS), commissioner, multidisciplinary team (MDT), possibly consultant or clinical team level and other levels of reporting
d.Engage service users, patients, parents, carers and families in a meaningful way, achieving a strong patient voice which informs and contributes to the design, functioning, outputs and direction of the audit
e.Consider the value and feasibility of linking data at an individual patient level to other relevant national datasets either from the outset or in the future, and plan for these linkages from the in