Most health and care organisations think about contract readiness in one way: will we be ready when the tender lands?
That is important. Tender windows are short, questions are specific and commissioners can spot a rushed response from a fair distance. A strong service can still lose if its evidence is scattered, its governance is out of date and its story has to be assembled under pressure.
But competitive tendering is not the only route to funding.
An organisation may need to be ready for three different opportunities:
- A competitive tender.
- Service- or outcome-specific funding allocated to a credible local partner.
- A direct award or contract continuation under the Provider Selection Regime (PSR).
The preparation is not identical, but the foundations are remarkably similar. You need a clear offer, credible evidence, strong governance and a convincing explanation of why your service improves the system rather than simply adding another organisation into it.
That last point matters more than ever.
Integration is not a nice extra
“Integrated” is one of the most overused words in health and care. It can mean anything from sharing a meeting room to genuinely redesigning how people move through services.
Commissioners will look past the word. They will want to know what integration actually does.
Does it remove duplicated assessment? Does it stop people repeating their story? Does it create safer handovers? Does it direct people to the right support first time? Does it improve continuity, reduce avoidable escalation or make better use of clinical capacity?
A credible proposition answers those questions with evidence, not aspiration.
The strongest integrated models tend to show practical connections: shared pathways, interoperable information, joint governance, clear escalation arrangements, direct referral routes and teams that understand each other’s roles.
That is the shift organisations need to make. Do not merely describe your service. Show what the system would lose if your service disappeared or was broken into pieces.
Build your proposition around the five PSR criteria
Whether you are bidding competitively, seeking targeted funding or making the case for a direct award, the five PSR key criteria are a useful discipline:
- Quality and innovation
- Value
- Integration, collaboration and service sustainability
- Improving access, reducing health inequalities and facilitating choice
- Social value
They are not five separate boxes to fill in at the end. They are the structure of a commissioner’s decision.
For quality and innovation, show that your model works now and explain how it will keep improving. Use performance, user feedback, learning from incidents, workforce capability and credible improvement plans.
For value, go beyond price. Explain unit costs where they are meaningful, but also show the costs avoided elsewhere: unnecessary admissions, duplicated activity, delayed care, repeat contacts or avoidable escalation. A cheaper standalone service is not always better value if it creates more work and risk elsewhere.
For integration, collaboration and service sustainability, be specific. Name the pathways, partners, governance arrangements, shared resources and operational relationships that make your service work. Explain why these take time to build and what is at risk if they are disrupted.
For access, inequalities and choice, show who benefits, who still struggles and how your model responds. “Accessible to everyone” is not evidence. Data, outreach, reasonable adjustments, local knowledge and targeted improvements are.
For social value, describe the wider contribution: local employment, workforce development, community partnerships, environmental impact and investment that remains in the place.
Be ready for the right route
A compelling proposition does not demand a direct award. It gives commissioners a well-evidenced, auditable basis to decide what route is most appropriate.
The PSR gives commissioners greater flexibility, but that flexibility comes with more scrutiny, clear decision records and a need to explain why a chosen route is lawful, proportionate and in the interests of patients and the system.
So, if you believe your organisation is especially suited to deliver an integrated service, prepare the evidence before the conversation starts.
Ask yourself:
- Can we demonstrate outcomes and reliability?
- Can we show value across the whole pathway, not just within our own service?
- Can we evidence the partnerships and infrastructure that make integration real?
- Can we explain the practical risks of fragmentation or transition?
- Could a commissioner use our material to justify a confident decision?
If the answer is “not yet”, that is not a reason to wait. It is the reason to start.
Most bids are won or lost before the tender is published. Increasingly, the same is true of funding decisions and PSR awards. The organisations that are clear about their value, organised in their evidence and honest about their contribution to integration will be the ones commissioners find easiest to back.
If you are preparing for a tender, a funding opportunity or a contract renewal, At Scale can help you sharpen your proposition, organise your evidence and build a commissioner-facing case that stands up to scrutiny. Start with the Bid Ready Scorecard, The Public Sector Bid Readiness Assessment then talk to us about what needs strengthening first.
