Homecare and Home Delivery Service for Medicinal Products

Health and Social Care Trusts in Northern Ireland plan to tender for Homecare Medicine Services (i.e. Trust Funded) later this year.

In order to assist with the development of a service specification and an appropriate methodology for the assessment of tenders, we are keen to engage with suppliers who would be willing to provide homecare medicines services to patients living in Northern Ireland. The purpose of the engagement is to aid our understanding of current market conditions and capacity.

A homecare medicine service may be defined as one that delivers medicine supplies and associated care, directly to a patient’s home or other suitable community based location. The service would be provided from a registered pharmacy, and would include;

1. dispensing of medication in accordance with a hospital prescription,
2. delivery to the patient,
3. supply of any ancillary items or equipment that is required
4. waste management.

The provider will be required to provide a prescription management service, as well as communicating directly with the patient regarding the supply of their medication.

If further information is required regarding a homecare service, a sample specification is available via the following: www.rpharms.com/recognition/setting-… ↗

This Preliminary Market Engagement (PME) will take place in two phases. Phase 1 will be the completion of a PME Questionnaire that will set out a number of policy areas for consideration and response, including; human rights, cyber security and net zero.

Phase 2 will be a brief Teams meeting between interested suppliers and Trust members (note each supplier will be allocated a time likely no more than 30 minutes). The focus of the Teams meeting will be to understand current capacity, geographical presence, minimum patient numbers required for a viable service and business continuity measures. These meetings are expected to take place at the end of June/ start of July 2025.

If you would like to participate in the Preliminary Market Engagement you can do so via eTendersNI, CfT ref: 5965006 where you can obtain a copy of the questionnaire.

Please note this is not a call for tender. This engagement is for information gathering only. Participation in this engagement will not impact your ability to submit a tender when the tender opportunity is published