A typical GP Practice in Sunderland, with 7100 patients will house approx. 450 000 pages in Lloyd George (LG) Envelopes containing crucial historical medical records for every patient.

The detailed personal information stored inside means that security and accuracy are vital and coupled with the fact that many paper records are over 60 years old and in a state of decay and becoming unreadable, this is both clinically and legally unsafe.

Practices are required by law to retain patient records, pre-digitisation records are kept within the Lloyd George envelope. For the most part, they can be very paper heavy and take up storage space on a practice site or in secondary storage areas, sometimes at significant costs to practices.

39 practices across Sunderland have funding to fully digitise their Lloyd George Records which will not only create efficiencies within general practice but free up much needed space within the practice which can be utilised for clinical use.

This procurement is for a one off scanning exercise up to and including the above number of Lloyd George Records. The practices reserve the right to withdraw from the process. In the event of practice withdrawal the cost envelope will reduce in relation to their list size. To help ensure practices remain in the process it is requested that the work that is required from the practices must be kept to a minimum.

Sunderland CCG is leading the procurement on behalf of it’s GP Practices, but the contract shall reside with the individual practice and any ongoing work following the initial scanning requested as part of this procurement, will be agreed and funded by the practice.

For avoidance of doubt the list size is the maximum number of Lloyd George records that will be required and may not be the final total number once the supplier is chosen. It will depend upon the work required by the practices.

A project group has been established within Sunderland CCG with a dedicated project manager who will be coordinating the procurement process, responsible for guiding practices through the process and will be the main point of contact.

This procurement is being carried out by the National Commercial and Procurement Hub (NHS England) on behalf of the commissioners.