At 7.6 million, the number of treatments and the 6.4 million people waiting for them remains stubbornly high with the latest figures from the NHS showing over 40 per cent have already waited longer than 18 weeks. Others have waited over two years.
NHS Shared Business Services (SBS) has designed an Insourcing of Clinical Services framework agreement to help the NHS secure extra clinical capacity, enabling trusts to retain capacity planning in-house and ensure patients can be seen within the trust.
The solution offers a compliant route for NHS trusts to swiftly source vetted suppliers and procure a range of clinical services that can be offered to patients at a trust’s own site.
Ian French, principal category manager of health at NHS SBS, commented: “Tackling NHS elective recovery targets is challenging when faced with a backlog of patient appointments and limited capacity to deliver services.
“Insourcing can help in working towards attaining the 18-week referral to treatment target, enabling the NHS to utilise rooms that may otherwise be dormant, or to hold clinics out-of-hours to increase capacity and thus the volume of patients seen.”
Intended to be used as a short to medium term solution, insourcing allows third party suppliers to provide clinical diagnostic and treatment services using NHS trust equipment and premises which may otherwise be idle.
This is usually done out-of-hours, or at weekends, or in some circumstances, insourcing is used when there is a shortage of staff within a certain speciality.
“By using spare capacity and employing medical teams, providers can see a high volume of patients in a short amount of time, and the insourcing service procured is tailored to meet the specific needs of the NHS trust,” said French.
NHS SBS’s framework agreement spans the entirety of elective specialty services including ear nose and throat (ENT), rheumatology, ophthalmology, orthopaedics, cardiology, urology, gynaecology, colorectal surgery, endoscopy, dermatology, general surgery and plastic and reconstructive surgery, to name a few.
The Insourcing of Clinical Services procurement framework forms part of NHS SBS’s Elective Recovery Combined Framework Agreement Solution, designed to provide the NHS with solutions to gain additional capacity to help trusts see more patients, more quickly and deliver whole business priorities to achieve key objectives and targets.
French concluded:“When used appropriately and as intended, insourcing offers the NHS increased capacity within clinical diagnostic and treatment areas, increasing productivity and efficiency.“
