Redesign of Urgent Care Evaluation

Tender description

The Scottish Government (SG), on behalf of the Scottish Ministers, wishes to commission an evaluation of the Redesign of Urgent Care (RUC) pathway in the NHS. This evaluation will contain two projects and will be the first independent evaluation of the RUC pathway building on two earlier internal staging reports. The findings from this evaluation will inform future government strategy and policy, and improvements in service delivery. Brief description of services required -A patient postal survey distributed to a sample who have recently contacted NHS 24 with a target of at least 1000 responses. The postal survey should include research questions around what went well and what could be improved at different points in the patients journey along the pathway (i.e., NHS 24 and Flow Navigation Centres). There should also be an option to complete the survey online. -An online omnibus/panel survey distributed to a sample who did not have access to NHS 24 (i.e., their call was unanswered or abandoned), with a target of at least 300 responses. The supplier will be responsible for sourcing or delivering an omnibus/panel survey provider to recruit this sample within the budgetary restrictions. The online omnibus/panel survey should include questions about why participants ended their call and what they did next. - A minimum of three focus groups with staff involved in the delivery of urgent and unscheduled care (i.e., planning, delivery and management roles) would also be expected. As much as is possible we would expect staff included to be representative of staff roles, Scotland’s 14 health boards and demographic characteristics. We expect the focus groups to include questions around staff’s understanding of the RUC pathway, what benefits they have identified from its implementation and any challenges that have risen due to implementation of the RUC pathway. - An evaluability assessment is required to provide the foundations of an evaluation framework which will help guide future larger evaluations of the RUC pathway. The evaluability assessment is also expected to provide insight into current performance of the RUC pathway. Multi-criteria- decision analysis was the previously agreed analytical approach which would be expected.