Health services

Tender description

The Commissioners wish to undertake early engagement with potential providers and subcontractors and the market in general who share our passion and commitment and who are dedicated to providing the very best choice, service and patient care standards, for a Staffordshire wide integrated urgent care service. In particular the commissioners would like to discuss their plans with the market to understand capacity and the ability of providers to deliver this service. The proposed service is intended to provide an Integrated Urgent Care Service for the population of Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent consisting of: Core services: — NHS 111 and NHS 111 online, — a Staffordshire Clinical Assessment Service (CAS), — Primary care Out of Hours (OoH) service (including hear and treat, see at base and home visit). Change to Primary Care OOH: The CAS will include direct access for health and care professionals. This type of access will be available for emergency ambulance professionals and care home professionals and certain community health professionals initially and is likely to be rolled out to other professionals where opportunity exists for alternatives to A&E attendance. This type of CAS access is known as star 5 or star 6 etc. elsewhere. Additional services subject to final CCG confirmation — operation of the Urgent Care Centre (UCC) co-located with the Emergency Department of the Royal Stoke Hospital which will provide front door streaming for patients presenting with non-life threatening or serious illnesses. A see and treat service will be provided for streamed patients not requiring ED services, — a Staffordshire in-hours urgent home visiting service for acutely unwell patients unable to attend GP clinics and whose alternative service would be presentation at A&E. Developmental services (Subject to final CCG confirmation): We plan a multi-year contract and intend to commission services developments that will be phased in after the first 12 months with the aim of incorporating other community based urgent care services into the IUC such as rapid response services. We also intend to expand and further develop the CAS. Core service specifications will be compliant with the national integrated urgent care service specification (https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Integrated-Urgent-Care-Service-Specification.pdf) Please note that within Staffordshire we will be consulting on the future Urgent Treatment Centre (UTC) configuration across Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent OT. IUC providers will be expected to provide services fully integrated with future UTCs including direct booking of UTC slots from 111/CAS. In line with the NHS Long Term Plan, we intend that by no later than 2023, the CAS will function as the single point of access for patients, carers and health professionals for integrated urgent care and discharge from hospital care. The final full-service specification will be published as part of a future procurement process around April 2019.