Market engagement questionnaire for Community Healthcare Services (PODAC)

Community healthcare services cover a wide range of services, from those targeted at people living with complex health and care needs, such as district nursing and palliative care, to health promotion services, such as school nursing and health visiting. These services play a key role in keeping people well, treating and managing acute illness and long-term conditions, and many clinical staff work remotely to support people to live independently by visiting patients in their own homes. Provision of care in community healthcare settings requires multiple digital information resources to manage and maintain the services, including and not restricted to e-rostering systems, booking systems, referral systems and EPR Systems. Increased provision of care outside hospitals and in community healthcare settings is one of the improvements outlined in the NHS Long Term Plan and will help ensure we meet the changing health needs of the country over the coming decade. Critical to achieving this ambition is the digital transformation of community healthcare services. Our aim is to support the community healthcare sector to adopt and embed the best digital solutions and capabilities so that the best care can be provided in community healthcare settings, safely and effectively. A core element of the 2022/23 Priorities and Operational Planning and Guidance, is to use what we have learnt through the pandemic to rapidly and consistently adopt new models of care that exploit the full potential of digital technologies Our ambition is to: Digitise community healthcare services by making use of existing and emerging shared care record capability. An objective within the 2022/23 priorities and operational planning guidance is that by March 2023, all systems within a Shared Care Record collaborative can exchange information across the whole collaborative, with a view to national exchange by March 2024. Create straightforward digital access to NHS services, and help patients and their carers manage their health. Connect community healthcare services to their partners in the rest of the NHS, and in other sectors and provide an uninterrupted view of the patient journey. Ensure that clinicians can access and interact with patient records and care plans wherever they are. Ensure NHS systems and NHS data are secure through implementation of security, monitoring systems and staff education. Mandate and rigorously enforce technology standards (as described in The Future of Healthcare) to ensure data is interoperable and accessible. Use intuitive tools to capture data as a by-product of care in ways that empower clinicians and reduce the administrative burden. Optimise rostering and scheduling solutions so that staffing resource can be planned productively and efficiently in the complex community healthcare environment. An objective within the 2022/23 priorities and operational planning guidance is to ensure the highest level of attainment set out by the 'meaningful use standards' for e-job planning and e-rostering is met to optimise the capacity of the current workforce Develop and test interoperability standards to enable integration with wider clinical information systems Standardise e-referral pathways enabling patients to have the same experience, no matter what type of care they need. An ambition set out in the 2022/23 priorities and operational planning guidance is for the NHS e-Referral Service (e-RS) to become an any-to-any health sector triage, referral and booking system by 2025 Support patient access to appointment, booking and referral systems providing the opportunity for self-management where it is safe to do so. This market engagement exercise aims to understand the availability of solutions which can support NHSX to further digitise community healthcare services by enabling systems to connect with each, other more effectively and with other healthcare providers within wider health and care systems. This will, in turn, increase the transparency and access to services, enabling better communications between clinical teams and services, ultimately improving patient experiences, outcomes and pathway performance. Interested suppliers are invited to complete a questionnaire that has been designed to develop an understanding of the current maturity of suppliers in the market, and the ability to meet the PODAC priorities listed below: • Test and roll-out cloud-based EPR solutions more fully to support the needs of community healthcare services. • Work with NHSX bookings and referrals programme to develop national standards and procurement routes for electronic referral management systems (and related appointment booking capability) including: - From NHS111 and general practice (pathways for which NHSE/I has or plans to commission services), and to mental health services. • Development of clinical terminology standards to enable the transfer of patient information to other systems. • Development of interoperability standards to enable connectivity with other health care records and standardisation of practice management systems (PMS). • Development of standardised e-referral pathways for urgent, routine and specialist care. Further information on digital capabilities is included in the presentation, available via the Intend portal. The National Commercial & Procurement Hub is conducting this market engagement on behalf of NHSX. The questionnaire and further details on the PODAC capabilities are available via the Intend e-procurement system. Information gathered through this market engagement activity will help inform the PODAC commercial strategy and any possible future procurement process. This market engagement will not impact on participation in any procurement process. For the sake of clarity, respondents should note their information will be held as commercial in confidence and solely used for the purpose of strategy formation. Should you wish to participate in this exercise please register through the Intend e-procurement system (https://in-tendhost.co.uk/scwcsu/aspx/Home) for further instructions. If you require any further assistance, please contact commercial.procurementhub@nhs.net. The deadline for completing the questionnaire is 17.00 on 8th February 2022. Additional information: For the avoidance of doubt, this notice is an information gathering exercise rather than a call for competition in its own right, and therefore publication or response does not commit the commissioner(s) to a future procurement, nor provide any process exemptions or preferential treatment to any parties expressing an interest. NHSX will not be liable for costs incurred by any interested party in participating in this exercise.