Commercial and outsourcing for health

We have a large team of experienced lawyers supporting nationally on commercial and outsourcing projects for local and national health and care clients across both the public sector and independent sector.

The breadth and scale of our team means that we can advise on anything from ‘business as usual’ non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), contracts and memoranda of understanding (MoU) to long-term outsourcing arrangements, partnering and joint ventures major national projects and high-value (multi-£bn) commercial and statutory transactions.

Our sector specialism means we advise not just on the legal requirements, but also understand the surrounding sector-specific issues, pressures and policy requirements.

Our understanding of both the public and independent sector is invaluable when supporting on projects between the NHS and independent sector partners. As our work is often on a national scale, we’re also able to provide additional insight when working with our clients, particularly on emerging areas.

Our advice draws on seamless support from our teams in the following areas: NHS procurement, healthtech, data protection and privacy, antitrust and competition, regulatory, project management and HR and workforce. Our core health and care experience includes advising on integrated care arrangements, the use and tailoring of the NHS Standard Contract and the related model sub-contracts, and all forms of primary medical contracts (GMS, PMS and APMS), primary dental contracts (GDS and PDS), pharmacy and ophthalmology arrangements.

We support on the creation of private patient facilities and associated arrangements, advise on practising privileges arrangements and contracts for the provision of services by consultants.

Our support on non-clinical arrangements ranges from advising on service level agreements, NHS contracts service level agreements and MoUs, through to contracts for equipment disposal and air ambulance arrangements, and on to managed equipment services (MES) contracts (for example, for pathology equipment services) and outsourcing arrangements for back-office functions and for discrete services like pathology testing.

We support a range of collaboration and delegation arrangements, for example, partnership / s75 agreements between the NHS and local authorities (including Better Care Fund arrangements) and collaboration arrangements between NHS bodies, for example, for back-office functions and non-clinical services such as estates and facilities.

We also advise on income generation arrangements, grant agreements and arrangements for research and innovation collaborations.