Hosting of Adult Critical Care Transfer Services (ACCTS) within the South East Regional Footprint.

NHS England and NHS Improvement South East (The Commissioner) seeks initial Expressions of Interest (EOI) from providers who have the capability and capacity to host the ACCTS within the South East Region. The Commissioner aims to ensure the substantive commissioned ACCTS is in place during the 2022/23 financial year, which aligns with the current nationally produced service specification for ACCTS (a copy of which can be found at https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/adult-critical-care-transfer-services, along with toolkits). It is currently anticipated that the contract duration will be in the region of 3-5 years, although this is to be confirmed. The contract value for the new contract is to be finalised and is dependent on a number of factors, including a potential extension of the service hours. The ACCTS will be a regionally based critical care transfer service/s providing consultant led coordination, decision-support and transfer of critically ill patients between hospitals for time critical and non-time critical escalation to specialist care, retrieval, repatriation, and non-clinical transfers for capacity during periods of surge. It is primarily focussed on intra region transfers but must be capable of delivering inter regional transfers and repatriations along patient tertiary referral pathways and during periods of surge capacity when the Adult Critical Care (ACC) service is under pressure. The commissioning of the ACCTS will provide a minimum standard of care and equitable access for all adult patients during transfers. The host of this service is responsible for the ACCTS and facilitating running the service, but decisions will be made through the partnership board (see below). These services are currently commissioned in an interim arrangement directly with the two NHS Ambulance Service Trusts in the South East. As is described in the National toolkits, it is anticipated that the substantive service will be hosted by an Acute Trust or an Acute Trust in partnership with a Non-Acute Trust, with experience of delivering adult critical care services. This Trust, or Trust partnership, would work collaboratively within a governance framework of an ACCTS Partnership Board to set up and host the ACCT Service, as described in the national toolkits. The ACCT Service will operate as a standalone service, which means that whilst the host will hold the substantive or honorary contracts for clinical staff, they must not function as part of a Critical Care Unit in terms of staffing, day-to-day function or interdependence. Staff must be independent and not have other clinical responsibilities whilst carrying out transfer shifts. The host will retain contractual and clinical responsibility for the delivery of the ACCTS. The operational and management activity of the ACCT Service will be overseen by the ACCT Service Partnership Board, with representation from the host and NHSEI (as a minimum) and where strategic collaborative decisions will be made about the set up and design of the service, as well as the long-term strategy and reporting. EOIs received will be used to help NHSE/I identify any potential providers interested in hosting the service and determine commissioning and contracting options for these services. As such, only organisations with appropriate capability and actual/potential capacity to host the ACCTS should respond to this notice.