A HEALTH body has defended its “transparent” procurement process in light of 16 of 39 tenders last year being awarded to private companies.

North East Essex Clinical Commissioning Group awarded ten contracts to the NHS compared to 11 given to charities, community interest companies and not-for-profit organisations and the rest being spent with Primary Care Support England and the North East Essex GP Alliance.

However, the commissioning group’s total spend of £48.3 million excludes 15 tenders with variable contract amounts - nine of which are for private care groups as part of the NHS’s integrated residential nursing scheme.

It has been a month since Shadow Health and Social Care Secretary Jonathan Ashworth called for national NHS contracts to be kept in public hands.

A commissioning group spokesman said: “In line with other NHS organisations, we operate tenders under the NHS procurement, patient choice and competition rules and the Public Contracts regulations 2015.

“We operate a transparent process and advertise tenders and contracting decisions nationally and at EU level as appropriate.

“We aim to select the best providers for each service using a scoring framework weighting factors such as quality and price.

“Our contracts with providers end at different times so we do not tender for the same number of services each year.

"Our main contracts are reissued each year, so the amount we spend on our tenders is a small proportion of our overall spend on the NHS in north east Essex.”

New tenders accounted for 93 per cent of the commissioning group’s expenditure between January 2018 and 2019.

Of the 24 tenders with fixed contract amounts, the financial split between the NHS and private companies were 48.8 per cent to 49 per cent respectively, between January 2018/19.

Care UK was the only service provider with more than one contract, covering out-of-hours GP services and its integrated urgent care service under NHS 111 - totalling £22.7 million.

The largest sum of £20.9 million was spent on integrated urgent care, followed by £17.7 million with the East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust on a new five year dermatology contract and £3.8 million on GP services at North Colchester Healthcare Centre with the Creffield Medical Group.

Speaking on the dermatology contract for Colchester and Tendring, the CCG explained there was public engagement before a “rigorous procurement process”.

Pam Green, director of transformation and strategy at NEECCG, said: “At a time of growing demand for healthcare services it’s important we not only commission services that deliver improved outcomes and the best possible experience for patients, but also we help to support people to self-care and to be prevented from developing skin disease wherever we can.”