Selected Medical Practitioners market engagement event announced

Background:

The Policing Vision 2025 sets out the ambition to ensure that every member of the police service should feel confident that their welfare and wellbeing is being supported by their force, that everyone understands their personal responsibilities and that a culture supporting the aim is embedded into every force.

Occupational Health and Wellbeing services have an important role in the achievement of this goal. These preventative services support the health and wellbeing of members of the police services throughout their ‘journey’ from the assessment of fitness at recruitment to the management of ill health retirement process.

The Police Pensions Regulations 2015 defines a Selected Medical Practitioner (SMP) as “a single duly qualified medical practitioner selected by the police pension authority”, or “a board of duly qualified medical practitioners selected by the police pension authority”. SMP’s assess whether an officer is medically unfit from performing the ordinary duties of a police officer until at least normal retirement age and therefore required to retire on medical grounds.

BlueLight Commercial has been working with Police Forces across England and Wales to review how SMP services are currently commissioned and managed. Together, we are looking at the options for the provision of a more consistent national practice and exploring how we can build a more sustainable workforce of medical professionals to support forces.

Market Engagement Event:

We would like to assess the interest in the services and gain a better understanding about what is possible to help inform subsequent procurement exercises.

We will be holding a formal virtual market engagement event on the morning of 22^nd November 2021. The event will provide an update on our work to date and our commissioning intentions going forward. This is your opportunity to hear from the College of Policing and forces, and to help shape future SMP services.

If you are interested in attending this market engagement event, you can register your interest via the messaging function on EU Supply (project reference BLC 0034) no later than Friday 19th November 2021 at 11:00. Any interest received via email will not be accepted. Please note there may be a limit on the number of participants per organisation.

A full agenda and log in details will be provided via the portal in the near future.