Northamptonshire Community Dental Service [Direct Award Process A]

The Northamptonshire Community Dental Service delivers dental services to patients who are unable to access primary care dentistry e.g. patients who may have special needs, learning disabilities, significant health problems etc. Patients are referred into the service and need to meet clinical criteria to be accepted. Services provided cover mandatory services, Oral Health Promotion, Epidemiology, Domiciliary Visits, GA pathway for children and special care patients and sedation. The current annual contract value is circa £2.6m following annual uplifts.

Currently the nature of the service mean there are no realistic alternative providers, due to the provider operates an integrated workforce model to deliver their portfolio of services. It would not be viable to manage TUPE arrangements to an alternative provider to ensure continuity of service provision. Current provision is from within the providers existing estates in hospital setting as well delivering services from Health Centres across Northamptonshire. Part of the services in rural areas use shared accommodation and support services that provide efficiencies that would not be possible for standalone services, and these dependencies would not be possible under another provider at this time without detrimental impact to patient care and service delivery.