Procuring Equipment for Community Diagnostic Centres

One of the recommendations from The Diagnostic Recovery and Review Paper led by Professor Sir Mike Richards, commissioned by NHS England and Improvements, was to create Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs) or ‘one stop shops’. Community Diagnostic Centres offer a range of diagnostic checks, scans and tests away from acute Hospital trusts in locations which are more accessible to patients. Patients can visit their local CDC and have all their tests completed in one day, in one place. This approach reduces pressure on acute sites and provides quicker and more convenient access to diagnostic testing for patients. See our Useful Links section to read Sir Mike Richards’ paper.

The Large Diagnostic Capital Equipment: Including Mobile and Services area, encompasses a range of large-scale capital products and services for the NHS. 

Our team of procurement specialists are experts in their category areas and work with over 100 suppliers, to support the end to end procurement requirements of the NHS via our compliant frameworks. We work with the NHS to deliver capital savings in a number of ways, to maximise funding and to deliver a solution that meets the needs of the customer.

We work alongside the NHS England Community Diagnostic Centre Programme, to support trusts in procuring Large Diagnostic Capital Equipment in conjunction with modular builds/housing. In addition, we can support the partial or full outsourcing of CDC services, either long term and / or deliver interim CDC service solutions such as staffed and unstaffed mobile, modular or off-site services.

To date, we have supported 135 initial business cases within trusts.

In addition, NHS Supply Chain has the relevant frameworks in place for the consumable and pathology elements needed to support CDC set up. Contact details can be found at the bottom of this page.

• We offer the Largest National Framework Agreement, which enables us to facilitate the consolidation of customer requirements.
• Direct Award – our OJEU complaint frameworks means suppliers have already fulfilled the criteria of award during the contracting process, saving on in trust procurement.
• Support the full end to end process of managing the pricing exercises, obtaining all relevant quotes and ensuring compliance with framework pricing and issuing URNs/processing purchase orders.
• Support from initial business case to installation of equipment.
• We can facilitate associated consumables (both patient and equipment related), IT solutions, maintenance and turnkey works, as part of an overall managed service requirement, required for a CDC.
• We can facilitate the procurement of housing solutions; including but not limited to trailers, relocatable housing, modular builds, pods etc. as required by a customer due to lack of accommodation on site or to provide a service off site. These will be purchased in conjunction with equipment procured via the framework agreement. 
• Establish exact customer requirements to enable the correct quote and order to be raised first time.
• We provide a single point of contact for the customer, collating and processing renewals, in order to drive efficiencies in the quotation process.
• Customer Facing team and Capital Planners – working directly with trusts on their capital plans – support when looking at saving opportunities (for example Multi Trust Aggregation, DHSC deals, supplier capital promotional opportunities, etc).
• Consumables and pathology frameworks for CDC inclusion.

NHS Supply Chain: Large Diagnostic Equipment and Clinical Services has framework agreements in place for equipment and services which have been specified for inclusion in a CDC. We provide a compliant route to market for the capital purchase of:

• Colonoscopy
• CT
• Decontamination
• DEXA
• Echocardiography (ECHO)
• Flexi Sigmoidoscopy
• Gastroscopy
• Medical Devices
• MRI
• Plain X-Ray
• Ultrasound.

We also provide point of sale maintenance, to ensure your equipment is always covered at a great discount. NHS Supply Chain can also provide the consumables elements required for a CDC.

We are able to deliver against the services, medical IT and financing solutions required for a CDC including:

Managed Equipment and Clinical Service Solutions (MECSS) – Delivers a wide range of services from interim mobile scanning services (staffed and unstaffed), on/off site teleradiology reporting services, the provision of community vehicles for physiological measurements and pathology services, as well as fully outsourced long-term solutions. The framework has all the market leading outsourced diagnostic and managed equipment services suppliers awarded and provides for direct award.

Medical IT Departmental Hardware and Software Solutions – Offers a route to market which provides access to market leaders in departmental information systems, AI and other clinical software solutions. The framework provides for direct award making extending current systems (such as PACS/RIS) and or procuring new systems and solutions to meet tight CDC deployment timescales simple.

Finance Solutions – Provides provision of supplementary finance to support kit and services which may form part of a wider CDC solution but perhaps are not directly funded. Our team has access to leading healthcare funders and is able to deliver competitive rates across a range of products – operating and finance leases and loans.

Consumables and Pathology – NHS Supply Chain has frameworks in place for the consumable and pathology elements required for set up, including (not exclusively): ECG, respiratory, blood gases, point of care testing and urine testing.

Overview of the steps in the procurement process:

1. Trust Business Case approved.
2. Statement of Requirements (SOR) to be completed by trust and returned to NHS Supply Chain.
   • If the trust already has a quote from a framework supplier that they would like to use, please move to step 6.
3. NHS Supply Chain to issue quote request to framework suppliers (one working day).
4. Suppliers respond to quote request and issue all relevant documents to NHS Supply Chain (10 working days).
5. NHS Supply Chain collates responses and issues to trust for review (three working days).
6. Trust confirms to NHS Supply Chain which supplier / quote to proceed with and requests a URN.
7. NHS Supply Chain to issue URN to trust (two working days).
8. Trust to raise purchase order on either; NHS Supply Chain or Supplier (details will be included within the URN).

If you are interested in understanding more about Community Diagnostic Centres and our full service offering, please contact a member of our capital customer facing team. Alternatively, please contact: