Concordia Specialist Care Services has terminated a contract to provide dermatology services two months early and at very short notice. The work was picked up by an NHS provider after the company said it would “no longer be able to provide the service” to 24,000 Essex residents last Wednesday.
Commissioners told HSJ they were given no formal reason for the decision; the company gave just five days’ notice of the move, according to two local senior sources.
In 2017, the contract began providing secondary care support services to Colchester Hospital for inpatient and non-elective patients. The original contract was for five years, but the CCG announced in October it was being cut to two years and ending in July 2019.
The cut in contract time followed a CCG inspection of the services the company provided in Fryatt Hospital, Dovercourt. The inspection found “standards of hygiene and cleanliness in a number of areas did not comply with national standards, medication was out of date, specimens were inappropriately stored in a medication fridge and Concordia staff were unaware of how to access organisational policies”.
Full article in the HSJ, 20 May 2019
