An integrated care board is re-examining its award of a £40m patient transport contract after the procurement regulator ruled it had failed to “act fairly”, HSJ reports.
Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire (BNSSG) ICB awarded a five-year contract to EMED Group in September to provide non-emergency patient transport services across the entire system. This contract is supposed to begin in April.
But the Independent Patient Choice and Procurement Panel (IPCPP) has now advised BNSSG to review the procurement after it found that the ICB had failed to properly consider concerns that the process “favoured” the eventual winner.
According to an IPCPP report, one of the seven unsuccessful bidders for the contract claimed a “well-placed, senior” individual within the ICB had told it the procurement had been “conducted so as to favour EMED”. This was being done, it was alleged, in an attempt to secure “a settlement to ongoing litigation” with the company.
EMED brought legal action against the ICB in 2023 after losing out on a patient transport contract that was awarded to Savoy Ventures Ltd, which went into administration less than one month after the start of the contract. The legal claim remains unresolved.
Date: 10 February