On Demand Availability of Drugs for Palliative Care

The aim of the service is to provide immediate and consistent access to palliative care medication across NHS Surrey Heartlands (and wider, work has been done collaboratively across Surrey) with the ultimate aim of providing the best level of End-of-Life care and reducing inappropriate admissions in the last weeks of a patient's life.

To improve access for people to these specialist medicines when they are required by ensuring prompt access and continuity of supply.

To support users, carers and clinicians by providing them with up-to-date information and advice, and referral where appropriate.

The purpose of this service is to support patients to live and die in their place of choice and to reduce inappropriate admissions in the last weeks of their life, a locally commissioned service (LCS) has been developed for the on-demand availability of palliative care drugs through a number of selected pharmacy contractors in the area.

This service supplies specialist medicines for palliative care, the demand for which may be urgent and/or unpredictable via several pharmacy contractors.

The pharmacy contractor will stock a locally agreed range of specialist medicines and will make a commitment to ensure that users of this service have prompt access to these medicines during their hours of opening. These drugs have been agreed by the service providers and are considered to cover most "urgent" requests.

The pharmacy will provide information and advice to the user, carer and clinician in line with locally agreed palliative care guidelines. They may also refer to specialist centres, support groups or other health and social care professionals where appropriate.

The palliative care drugs list and details of pharmacies will be circulated to all primary care prescribers, including the out of hours service, District Nurses, Palliative Care Nurses, Community Pharmacies, Hospital Pharmacists and Palliative Care Consultants so that all the appropriate health care professional are aware of what is reasonable to expect to be available. "Palliative care" pharmacies will be used mainly in an emergency situation, where the drugs cannot be obtained by the local Community Pharmacy within an appropriate timescale.

The Commissioner intends to award a contract to an existing provider following direct award process C. The contract duration is 24-months, from 01/04/2026 - 31/03/2028. The lifetime value of the contract is £2,244.00.

This procurement has been carried out by NHS South, Central and West Commissioning Support Unit (SCW) on behalf of the Commissioners.