It needs secure forms, non-secure forms, personalised printed products, NHS Cards, and Health Insurance Cards.

The current requirement is to provide an agreement to produce and distribute personalised cards and/or paper certificates and/or digital exemptions and/or documentation for Medical Exemption (Medex), Tax Credits (TC), European Health Insurance Card (EHIC), Global Health Insurance Card (GHIC), NHS Pension payroll information, and the Covid Pass.

The supplier will also need to provide an online ordering portal and customer contact centre with catalogues to order secure and non-secure forms.

“The secure catalogue consists of prescription forms used in England and Wales and can either be personalised pads or non-personalised single sheets,” NHSBSA stated.

“The non-secure catalogue consists of national products used across the NHS; these range from dental record cards to specialist neonatal screening cards, multipart patient record and information packs.

“In addition, the Help with Health Costs catalogue consists of a number of leaflets, posters and application forms which enable certain patients to receive financial assistance with elements of their healthcare.”

Further information on how interested parties can register an interest and access the procurement documents, as well as contact details for NHSBSA, are available via the government’s Contracts Finder service.

Worth £123.1m, the tender closes at 12pm on 18 May 2023, with the contract starting on 1 July 2024 and ending on 30 June 2028. There is also the option to extend the contract for a further two years.

While operational services will commence on the initial contract period start date, the implementation period is anticipated to commence in September 2023.

NHSBSA had previously gone out to tender in 2018 with the NHS Forms, Print, Exemptions, Cards & EHIC (FPECE) contract, which was worth £65.35m and was awarded to Xerox (UK) on 3 December 2018.

This contract, which started on 1 July 2019, will end on 30 June 2024 – the day before the new NHSBSA contract begins.

This framework was set to run for 36 months until 30 June 2022, but there was an option to extend at that point.

At the time, NHSBSA said the value of the contract was an estimate and may decrease if the option to extend was not exercised and could increase or decrease during the term, depending upon a number of variables in relation to the volumes of products ordered.