Health and social work services

Tender description

NHS Luton Clinical Commissioning Group and NHS Bedfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group seeks to jointly commission an Integrated Urgent Care (111 and Out of Hours) Service across Luton and Bedfordshire via a ‘Prime Provider’ approach. Central to this will be a professional Clinical Advice Service offering patients who require access to a wide range of clinicians, both experienced generalists and specialists. It is essential that these clinicians are supported by the availability of clinical records such as Summary Care Record (SCR) and Enhanced Summary Care Record (ESCR) as well as Electronic Prescribing and other locally available systems. The IT system must also allow directly bookable urgent appointments into Primary Care GP systems. The offer for the public will be a single entry point — NHS 111 — to fully integrated urgent care services in which organisations collaborate to deliver high-quality, clinical assessment, advice and treatment and to shared standards and processes with clear accountability and leadership. Therefore the Integrated Urgent Care (111 and Out of Hours) Service should allow movement of patients seamlessly from 1 element of the system to the other, streamlining the experience for patients, reducing unnecessary waiting and inefficiency. The Integrated Urgent Care (111 and Out of Hours) Service should not be limited to treating patients, but must also be committed to empowering the population to self-care where appropriate with a focus on education and lifestyle modification. The new provider will need to plan for online and digital provision in the future in order to make it easier for the public to access urgent health advice and care. This will increasingly be in a way that offers a personalised and convenient service that is responsive to people's health care needs when: — They need medical help fast, but it is not a 999 emergency; — They do not know who to contact for medical help; — The think they need to go to A and E or another NHSE urgent care service; — They need to make an appointment with an urgent care service; — They require health information or reassurance about how to care for themselves or what to do next.