CCG fined £8,000 for tech contract
The NHS in the West Country is facing hefty fines after rules were broken in its procedures for buying new communications technology.
A judge has fined the clinical commissioning groups for Bath, Swindon and Wiltshire, Bristol and Gloucestershire a total of £22,000.
Until recently, “clinical commissioning groups” or CCGS were responsible for buying healthcare resources over a particular area. In July of this year they were dissolved and their duties taken on by the new integrated care systems (ICSS).
On Friday, July 29, a High Court judge, Mr Justice Kerr issued the fines, including £8,000 to the Bath CCG, for ensuring that their preferred bidder won by manipulating a procurement process.
The NHS was hoping to roll out a communications system for GPS, hospital doctors and other medical staff to replace outdated technology like pagers.
The three clinical commissioning groups had organised a competitive tendering process and then awarded the contract to Cinapsis, a company linked to two senior members of staff.
The judge found that the requirement specification written by the CCGS was finessed “with a view to ensuring that Cinapsis’s technology could meet it”.
A competitor called Consultant Connect Ltd (CC), which already provided communications systems to the RUH felt that the process didn’t give it a fair chance to compete.
It sued the clinical commissioning groups over the apparent lack of transparency, arguing that the procurement process was
biased in favour of Cinapsis and that breached the Public Contracts Regulations.
In 2019, the NHS was still making frequent use of pagers, but the Secretary of State made a statement: “To bring the NHS into the 21st century… we’re banning pagers across the NHS.”
To replace the pagers, doctors were supposed to use mobile phones and apps to make contact, and provide each other with advice and guidance. According to the judgement, the three clinical commissioning groups got together to settle on a new technology to do that.
According to the judge, two NHS employees, John Turp and Dr Malcolm Gerald, had experience of a technology provided by Cinapsis which was already “performing satisfactorily” in Gloucestershire. They had experience of Cinapsis’ service provision and admired it.
Neither of the employees is accused of benefiting financially from the award of the contract.
According to the judgement, the doctors’ “knowledge of and admiration of” one supplier’s work was not enough to create a conflict of interest, but one of them lobbied tirelessly in favour of the product they liked.
The doctors agreed in principle in early 2021, on the merits that Cinapsis was the only candidate, and therefore, they felt, they avoided the need for a formal procurement process.
Since the contracting authorities “entertained only one formal bid, having formally eliminated all potential opposition,” Mr Justice Kerr found that the “principle breached was nothing less than that of fair competition”, for which reason he “concluded without difficulty” that the breaches were sufficiently serious to justify the award of damages.
The judge also brought the contract with Cinapsis to an end, over a year early, in January 2023.