Telephone operator services

Tender description

A telephone repeat prescription order service staffed by a trained medicines management team. In line with the NHS Long Term Plan and its national directive to deliver care at place by integrating local organisations together, NHS Sheffield Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) seeks to appoint an organisation with existing links, to provide a city-wide repeat prescription telephone ordering service. In order to optimise the use of medicines (NICE NG5), the Medicines Optimisation Team at the CCG introduced a telephone repeat prescription order service staffed by a trained NHS medicines management team. This followed work in Coventry reporting a 6 % reduction in items prescribed with associated reductions in prescribing costs. The CCG established a POL service in 2016 now supporting 13 general practices. Currently, delivery is by a team of Medicines Optimisation Support Assistants with oversight from pharmacy technicians. The provider will need detailed knowledge of Sheffield primary care in order to deliver the current provision (practice population circa 113 000 patients) and demonstrate that they can expand city-wide by engaging with the remaining practices and gaining their agreement to opt into the service. They will need to recognise this is a list-based practice service and that access to practice data will be required for service delivery. The CCG will assist in an advisory capacity for the first 2 months of the contract. The provider will need the following skills, knowledge, expertise and experience: • ability to work in partnership with the CCG; • methods for gaining an ongoing understanding of patient experience, including equality monitoring; • knowledge of medicines including ordering and supply issues; • data collection mechanisms; • operational service delivery within a primary care setting; • ability to recruit, train and retain staff; • ability to develop and scale up services; • system resilience and adequate business continuity to ensure robust service delivery at scale. As the provider may be required to TUPE existing Sheffield-based staff (seven people, 5.92 WTE), premises will be required in Sheffield.