Central Dental Referral Management Service for Midlands and East (East) Region

Tender description

The RMS will receive all referrals for NHS oral surgery, excluding non-elective and suspected malignancy, providers in NHS Midlands and East (East) Region. It is intended that the Referral Management Service will manage all dental specialties defined by the Commissioner across Midlands and East (East) Region. The initial service will manage the oral surgery referrals but can be developed to include other dental specialties such as orthodontics so that the Commissioners can improve the experience for the patient and prevent delays. It also allows the Commissioner to the review clinical outcomes, providing necessary assurances on quality and consistency. The service procured is required to provide a robust referral management system to facilitate the appropriate allocation of cases referred for specialist dental care to the most appropriate service. The Central Dental Referral Management Service will serve to provide 2 main functions and will be delivered in line with the requirements stated in the Service Specification. There will be an outward-facing service with a central hub to receive, process and (where specified) work with locally identified clinical triagers to process dental referrals for all dental specialities, ensuring referrals are received by the most appropriate clinical service providers across Midlands and East (East) Region. There will also be a significant requirement to maintain a comprehensive and robust referral dataset that will be analysed and presented in regular reports to the Commissioner. This will provide intelligence about quality assurance, clinician referral behaviours and clinical pathway outcomes to inform future and current commissioning decisions.