NHS England- Provision of Tiger Teams to Support EPR Delivery

Description

The Frontline Digitisation (FD) programme is working with provider organisations to support them in reaching a minimum level of digital capability (as defined by the Digital Capabilities Framework) and to have an electronic patient record (EPR) in place by the end of March 2026. For the purposes of this service, provider organisations are defined as NHS secondary care Trusts providing acute, specialist, community, mental health, and ambulance services.<br/><br/>To fulfil this ambition, the FD Programme are seeking a partner to create an experienced, multi-skilled, rapid response intervention service also known as a Tiger Teams service, capable of supporting EPR Delivery across England.<br/><br/>This service will be an expansion to an existing comprehensive support offer available to providers, designed to support the national demand for resource, expertise, and information necessary to successfully rollout EPRs. Lot 1: The current expectation is that the service will be a single operator framework (i.e. a framework agreement awarded to a single supplier or a single consortium), which will be statement of work-based, with set deliverables defined for each work package which will be individual to the discovery / intervention required for each Trust. Any call off contracts awarded under the framework will only be initiated by NHS England (not directly by NHS providers). Please note that the Contract Authority may elect to use a different sourcing route to the single-supplier framework approach described above.<br/><br/>The budget available to spend on this framework will be approximately £16,000,000 (inclusive of VAT) for the delivery of work packages (Statements of Work) to providers. Please note that this is a call off contract only and the full value of the contract may not actually be realised if the demand is not required. <br/><br/>The procurement will be conducted via an open tender and advertised through Find a Tender Service.<br/><br/>The service will need to provide the following to achieve its aim of increasing the quality of EPR delivery and reduce the risk of poor EPR deployment, which, in turn, will reduce the potential loss of benefit of EPR deployments in England:<br/>• Sourcing of NHS experienced, highly skilled resources, who can be deployed to support a work package at a provider organisation at any point of its EPR Programme Lifecycle.<br/>• Sourcing and deployment of resources to support any provider on site across England in a timely manner.<br/>• Flexibility to increase and decrease resources quickly to meet the demands of the service.<br/>• Organisational working knowledge of best practice of EPR design, delivery, optimisation and usability and it's management.<br/>• Knowledge transfer and retention within the NHS, including working with and alongside staff using a buddying-style approach, thus building skills and expertise which creates a more sustainable resourcing model going forward.<br/>• Ability to build up a cohort of operators with specialist knowledge (cells) that can be deployed across the system on similar tasks, thereby enabling and accelerating the setting up of a virtual centre of expertise.<br/><br/>EPRs are notoriously complex to implement, and the maturity of the digital, data and technology (DDaT) workforce across England is varied, with providers having varying degrees of experience, and skills to implement successfully. <br/> <br/>Often during EPR delivery, there is a requirement for either a planned, or unplanned, specific, time-bound skill set, capable of providing a set of deliverables, problem rectification or other specialist intervention for an element of the EPR Programme. Trusts are finding it increasingly challenging to obtain good quality, skilled short-term resources, both from the recruitment and contingent labour market. <br/> <br/>To support Trusts to alleviate this issue, this service will provide Tiger Teams, defined as a group of highly skilled, experienced resources, commissioned to deliver a time-boxed service on behalf of the Trust where other attempts to fulfil the requirement have been unsuccessful. <br/> <br/>The level of support provided to a Trust is set out in the FD Programme’s operating model. Universally, FD provides various assurance reviews for all Trusts throughout their EPR programme lifecycles to support them with their programmes. The assurance process highlights areas of good practice and strength, in addition to areas of concern, which require addressing to improve the quality of the programme. <br/> <br/>The second tier of support the FD programme provides is via an FD Support Offer function, supported by a delivery partner, to provide knowledge, advice, guidance and training to Trusts. The Support Offer consists of the following: <br/> <br/>• Collaboration - Connecting with Each Other<br/>o Communities of Practice Forum<br/>o Supplier-based Peer Networks<br/>o Procurement Peer Networks<br/>o Peer-to-peer Partnerships<br/>• Knowledge - Sharing Best Practice<br/>o Webinars, Events and Drop-in Sessions<br/>o Guidance and Documents<br/>o Lessons Learnt<br/>o Blueprints<br/>• Expertise - Upskilling and Actionable Learning<br/>o Subject Matter Expert Support<br/>o Self-learning Toolkits<br/>o Targeted Intervention Support<br/>o Learning Labs<br/>There was also access to partially funded resource through the DDaT graduate recruitment programme, with ongoing recruitment to the end of March 2024. <br/> <br/>Despite the wealth of support available, there is a requirement to further support Trusts with hands-on, ‘boots-on-ground' interventions to ensure that certain critical activities to resolve challenges, including the associated upskilling and knowledge transfer, are undertaken in a timely and robust manner, increasing the likelihood of a timely and successful implementation. It will also avoid the costs, risks and reputational damage associated with a delayed and / or sub-optimal go-live in addition to the impact required for the Trust to course-correct. <br/> <br/>The FD programme is not resourced to provide hands-on targeted support into Trusts at the scale required, therefore an additional service is required to ensure the success of the overall programme and individual Trust EPR deployments.