The NHS North West London is inviting local residents and stakeholders to attend an online session to find out about the new procurement currently underway to run six urgent treatment centres (UTCs) in the region.
The UTCs we are looking for a new provider are:
- Ealing, Northwick Park, Central Middlesex UTCs (London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust).
- Hillingdon Hospital UTC, (The Hillingdon Hospital NHS Foundation Trust).
- St Mary’s Hospital UTC, (Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust).
- West Middlesex Hospital UTC, (Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust).
The current contracts for provision end on 31 November 2022. We expect the new providers to be in place in early 2023. This will allow us to provide continuity of service provision over the busy early winter period and holiday season.
The contracts will be for three years, with an option to extend for a further two. The current budget across all services is c£26 million.
Service improvement aims
A key focus of the procurement is to secure providers who are focused on providing a safe and effective service to a clinically high standard, and who will be able to deliver our service improvement aims:
- Collaborative working across primary and secondary care, building stronger relationships with primary care, secondary care, out of hours services and NHS 111.
- The development of better and improved services and shared patient pathways so that patients are seamlessly transferred to the team that are best placed to support them, and those requiring urgent responses are seen more quickly.
- An urgent and emergency care service that gives patients a quicker journey, fewer points of contact and better access to services both inside and outside of hospital.
- To make sure that our UTCs provide high levels of performance on waiting times and service delivery, and patients receive a high quality service.
- Better sharing of information across NWL IT systems and between teams. This will allow clinicians to see the full patient record and support improved decision-making, patient care and outcomes. It will also stop patients having to repeat themselves every-time they see a different clinician.
Following the procurement our UTCs will fully comply with the nationally mandated UTC standards, including access to diagnostics and interoperability across acute and non-acute services.
Get involved
Whilst the services provided by the UTCs will be determined by the national UTC standards, it is important that the approach and objectives of this procurement exercise are shared with local residents and stakeholders.
To support this, we will be holding three online sessions at different times of the day to maximise attendance and reach.
- Friday 22 July 2022 8 to 9 am – click here to book your ticket
- Monday 25 July 2022, 6 to 7 pm – click here to book your ticket
- Wednesday 27 July 2022, 1 to 2 pm – click here to book your ticket
Contract details
Current contracts for provision of UTCs across North West London end on 31 November 2022. To appoint future providers a competitive dialogue approach is being used across four lots. Each lot is based upon the acute estate on which each UTC is sited, as described above.
Previously, we have offered a contract in one block (lot) covering the UTCs listed above. By splitting the procurement into four lots we intend to maximise the number and quality of the responses we receive by:
- Encouraging bids from a wider range of potential providers (including the hospital trusts) rather than limiting the market to providers large enough, and sufficiently interested in, running sites across NWL.
- Benefitting from local knowledge on populations and service configuration
- Exploring innovative ideas for service provision with a larger number of providers
Further information
If you would like further information or have any questions about the above, please contact Nick Lawrance, Head of Urgent and Emergency Care, NHS North West London nick.lawrance@nhs.net