Provision of a National Universal Newborn Hearing Screening Service

The HSE – HSE Procurement hereby invites suitably qualified and experienced Service Providers to submit tenders for the Provision of a National Universal Newborn Hearing Screening Service. This is a national service and one service provider is the optimum for a fully integrated hearing service to ensure all eligible babies are screened in a consistent, standardised way. For the purposes of this Tender, the objectives of implementing a newborn hearing screening programme are as follows: • To offer a hearing screen to all eligible newborn babies in listed acute maternity units under this Tender process using agreed national protocols for screening. • To offer screening to eligible newborn babies who may have been born outside the maternity unit setting; i.e. home births • To screen all eligible babies using the agreed national protocols for screening within 4 weeks of birth, and by 44 weeks gestational age for babies who have been in a Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU) or Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) for more than 48 hours. • To ensure effective and efficient referral to HSE diagnostic audiological services for those babies who need referring as per the agreed Care Pathways.