Data management services

Tender description

The Royal Free London combines globally recognised clinical expertise with local and friendly hospital care to represent the best in NHS treatment. The hospitals are renowned for specialist services. The Royal Free London leads UK healthcare in many areas, including immunology, liver transplant, kidney and bone marrow transplant, cancer treatment, plastic surgery and ENT surgery. The Royal Free Hospital is a major neuroscience base with a network extending throughout north London and into the south east of England. On a monthly basis, the clinical coding department operates to strict deadlines in fulfilling clinical data set reporting and audit requirements, necessary to meet commissioning obligations and the collection of income under the payment by results regime. The coding department is responsible for the completion/allocation of clinical codes against all finished consultant episodes (FCEs) undertaken in each month. There is a shortage of qualified clinical coders to service the NHS in London. RFL faces the challenge in maintaining a full establishment for its clinical coding department. In order to guarantee RFL meets its reporting and income generation objectives, a decision has been taken to outsource a proportion of its clinical coding activities. Remote clinical coding services are sought for all specialties offered by RFL, for both in-patient and out-patient finished consultant episodes (FCEs). Currently the volumes of clinical coding required by the RCCMS are estimated as: 1) In-patient episodes: circa 7 500-8 000 per month; 2) Out-patient episodes: circa 20 000 per month. On a rolling basis, RFL will determine the range of specialties and associated volumes to be coded by the RCCMS. RFL will liaise with the provider and advise forecast activity per specialty, as required. The contract will be for a period of 36 months with an option to extend by an additional 24 months (3 years + 1 + 1).