National Neonatal Audit Programme

The contract is expected to initially be delivered for NHS-funded care in England, Wales, Scotland, and Isle of Man for a period of 3 years, at a maximum total budget of up to £1,026,114 GBP excluding VAT. Bids exceeding this limit will be rejected. There is potential to extend the contract for up to two additional years as well as the option to include other Devolved Nations and/or Crown Dependencies.

The maximum budget ‘core’ value is £1,026,114 GBP excluding VAT. This excludes the potential two year extension and aspirational intent which will be included in the service specification at point of tender.

The role of a national clinical audit is to stimulate healthcare improvement through the provision of high quality information on the organisation, delivery and outcomes of healthcare, together with tools and support to enable healthcare providers and other audiences to make best use of this information. Outcomes are benchmarked against national guidance and standards e.g. quality standards from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), and those from other established professional and patient sources. Successful national audits are those where the individuals providing the data are also in a position to improve the system, and there is a shared understanding of what good care looks like.

The overarching aim is to stimulate improvements in care for babies admitted to neonatal care by measuring variations in quality, experience and outcomes of NHS care in England and Wales. During this contract period, the successful tenderer will need to build on the achievements of the audit to date and enhance the ability for the audit to be used for healthcare improvement.

Data is most useful locally for healthcare improvement when its provision to clinical teams is timely, the data is refreshed regularly and appropriate tools, support and guidance accompany the data outputs. The intent is for all of these features of the audit to be implemented and improved during the period of this contract.

The audit supplier will work with commissioners and funders to create a coherent strategy for how improvement goals will support the organisations in the neonatal care pathway to try and achieve them.

This audit programme is expected to:

a.develop a robust, high quality audit designed around key quality indicators likely to best support local and national quality improvement;

b.achieve, articulate and maintain close alignment with relevant NICE national guidance and quality standards throughout the audit, as appropriate;

c.enable improvements through the provision of timely, high quality data that compares providers of healthcare, and comprises an integrated mixture of named Trust or Health Board, commissioner, MDT, possibly consultant or clinical team level and other levels of reporting;

d.engage parents, carers and families in a meaningful way, achieving a strong patient voice which informs and contributes to the design, functioning, outputs and direction of the audit;

e.consider the value and feasibility of linking data at an individual patient level to other relevant national datasets either from the outset or in the future, and plan for these linkages from the inception of the contract;

f.ensure robust methodological and statistical input at all stages of the audit;

g.identify from the outset the full range of audiences for the reports and other audit outputs, and plan and tailor them accordingly;

h.provide audit results in a timely, accessible and meaningful manner to support quality improvements, minimising the reporting delay and providing continual access to each unit for their own data;

i.utilise strong and effective project and programme management to deliver audit outputs on time and within budget; and

j.develop and maintain strong engagement with local clinicians, networks, commissioners, parents and their families and carers and charity and community support groups in order to drive improvements in services for babies.

Further details of the existing audit can be found at: www.rcpch.ac.uk/work-we-do/clinical-… ↗

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