Health services

Tender description

This is a voluntary ex-ante transparency notice and is intended to provide notice of North East Essex CCG's intention to award a contract for the provision of a Hospital Ambulance Liaison Officer Service for North East Essex Clinical Commissioning Group. This is a voluntary ex-ante transparency notice and is intended to provide notice of North East Essex CCG's intention to award a contract to East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust (EEAST) for the provision of a Hospital Ambulance Liaison Officer (HALO) Service for North East Essex Clinical Commissioning Group. The service will commence on 1.4.2019 and end on 31.3.2021. The HALO role is the link between the ambulance service and the local acute hospital and covers the following: — first point of contact for ambulance crews arriving at the hospital, — supporting the hospital to manage patient flow, maximise resource availability and ensure patient safety, — educating and challenging ambulance crews around appropriateness of conveyances to ED and available admission avoidance pathways, — identification of frail patients and those ‘fit to sit’ in order to fast track to the ambulatory pathway and /or fast track to home pathway, — management and escalation of hospital handover delays. The staff providing the service are qualified paramedics and whilst it is hoped that in the future the local acute hospital may be able to staff the role with a similar clinician from their own staff, the clinical experience/expertise and skills required for the role are not present or available at this time within existing hospital staffing. In order for the role to be effective and serve as a point of integration between the hospital and EEAST, the staff covering the role need to be EEAST paramedics.