Telephone-answering services

Tender description

NHS Arden and Greater East Midlands Commissioning Support Unit (NHS Arden and GEM CSU) on behalf of NHS England Specialised Commissioning (Midlands and East) are inviting Expressions of Interest from suitably qualified providers capable of delivering a Call Handling Service to support telephonic communications relating to the delivery of health care services for units within the Midlands and East of England boundaries. The aim of the call handling service is to receive all requests for advice or transport relating to neonatal transport from CenTre (Central Newborn and Trent Perinatal Network), pediatric critical care from CoMET (Children’s Medical Emergency Transport) or ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation) patient transfers and/or retrievals to and from general hospitals to specialist treatment centres. The service will be available, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to provide a call handling service to gain advice and/or transport for neonates, critically ill children and all patients requiring ECMO. The overarching objectives of the service will be: — To provide an expeditious “communications conduit” service that meets the quality specification for the management of all calls for neonatal transport/retrieval requests, pediatric transport/retrieval requests and calls regarding ECMO patients. — To record all calls received or made by the provider associated with supporting the delivery of services referenced above. — To provide activity information on calls managed as described within the information schedule. — Provide a supporting service to help individuals who require specialist care to get the right advice, first time and facilitate their onward journey. The call-handling service will also manage calls from other hospitals when they are related to the movement of a patient in or out of one of the hospitals and at times of increased activity nationally known as “surge”. Please note that this expression of interest has been designed to allow the market visibility of the proposed opportunity and support early engagement. The aim of the expression of interest exercise is to: 1) Support NHS England’s informed decision making on the potential options on the future commissioning of these services; 2) To help refine the commissioning and procurement approach and; 3) To gauge the level of interest from the market of capable providers with capacity to deliver the services illustrated above. This is a market testing exercise and does not commit NHS England (Midlands and East) to carry out a procurement process. Current services will remain in place during this period in line with existing contracts and service level agreements.