Provision of Sourcing of Short-term and Temporary Locum General Practitioners (GPs) for the Health Sector in Ireland.

The Health Service Executive seeks to appoint suitably qualified employment agencies to source short-term locum General Practitioners (GPs) for General Medical Services (GMS) GPs working in rural Ireland. The purpose of this tender is to support access to locum cover for up to 250 GMS General Practitioners (GPs) in rural and remote areas, who are in receipt of the Rural Practice allowance. GPs in rural and remote areas must be able to access reliable locum cover to allow them take leave knowing that their patients will continue to receive high-quality care in their absence.

This scheme, developed under the terms of the 2023 GP Agreement, addresses a critical need for rural GPs who often face significant challenges in securing cover for periods of planned leave. It is envisaged that most leave requests will be for 1 to 2 week leave periods. The maximum leave duration that will be requested is a block of 5 weeks in total.

Under this scheme, eligible GPs in receipt of rural practice support will have access to a streamlined locum sourcing service. The service is currently provided by one employment agency under a non-compliant pilot programme set up by the National Contracts Office. This tender process is being conducted as an open-style tender under Annex XIV of Procurement directives 2014/24/EU.

The required services are listed as Annex XIV services, and accordingly, only Articles 74 to 77 of Directive 2014/24/EC applies to the award of any contract(s) that arise from this process. As such, there is considerable flexibility in conducting the tender process and this is required given the specialist nature of the services required and the very limited market. Tenderers will be ranked and scored according to the Award Criteria stated.

The four top ranked tenderers will be offered a contract. The estimated cost is €100k + VAT per year. The contract is for an initial 36-month period.

At the end of this period the HSE can assess if the services being delivered are satisfactory or if the requirements of the scheme changes. There are 2 x 12-month optional extensions. The current focus is ensuring that a contract is in place in early 2027