Physical Health Check Screen and Intervene Service for People with Serious Mental Illness

This notice is to inform the market of the direct award of a 16 month contract to Southdown Housing Association, for provision of a Physical Health Check Screen & Intervene Service for People with Serious Mental Illness in West Sussex, for NHS Sussex Integrated Care Board (ICB) commencing 1st December 2023. The contract value is £187,000.00 for 16 months.

The service seeks to improve outcomes for people living with Severe Mental Illness (SMI). The life expectancy for people with SMI is 15-20 years lower than the general population. This disparity in health outcomes is partly due to physical health needs being overlooked.

The service ensures individuals living with SMI are consistently offered appropriate and timely physical health assessments despite their higher risk of poor physical health. Individuals are supported to use available health information and offered advice or to take up tests and interventions that reduce the risk of preventable health conditions.

The service works proactively with Primary Care Networks (PCNs) to generate referrals for people on their Practice SMI Registers. The key target groups being those who need support to attend/engage with the Physical Health Check (PHC) and those having been identified as likely to benefit from Health Improvement intervention as a result of the PHC.

The Screen and Intervene service is already operating Sussex-wide and is delivered by the same provider across all places, which ensures consistency. It is well received by patients, who reportedly feel listened to and are appreciative of the tailored support offered.

The current contract has been in effect since June 2022 and the current service is being extended until the end of March 2025. A wider piece of work is being undertaken across Sussex around recommissioning all community based Mental Health Support Services with the aim of improving parity and consistency of services across the 3 geographical areas (West Sussex, East Sussex and Brighton & Hove). This work will take a phased approach to re-procurement across the Places to enable the work to be appropriately developed in collaboration with relevant stakeholders. In West Sussex, new services will be recommissioned with an effective date of 1st April 2025. This will give sufficient time to determine the best set of services to drive improvement that delivers population health outcomes, reduce fragmentation and harmonise services. The intent is to use the recommissioning process to support the integration of services across pathways and develop a more strategic approach to commissioning with the VCSE and other providers.

This direct award decision has been taken in the context of ensuring that the future service, when commissioned, will be complimentary to the ongoing re-development of emotional wellbeing services as part of the wider Mental Health Support Services recommissioning work being undertaken across Sussex.