Enhanced Clinical Advice and Guidance Service

NHS Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes Integrated Care Board are looking to procure an enhanced clinical advice & guidance (A&G) service to allow referring clinicians in BLMK with access to specialist clinical advice in real time verbally via telephone, prior to the point of referral. In addition, there is a requirement for the enhanced A&G service to allow enhanced A&G in the form of photo-based messages (for example in Dermatology termed Teledermatology).

NHS Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes Integrated Care Board are looking to procure an enhanced clinical advice & guidance (A&G) service to allow referring clinicians in BLMK with access to specialist clinical advice in real time verbally via telephone, prior to the point of referral. In addition, there is a requirement for the enhanced A&G service to allow enhanced A&G in the form of photo-based messages (for example in Dermatology termed Teledermatology).

The enhanced A&G service will complement the existing NHS electronic referral service (NHS e-RS) which enables A&G to be sought in a written format along with other functionalities such as being able to convert an A&G request into a referral. The enhanced A&G service will enable access to NHS specialist clinical advice across a wide range of specialties.

It is expected that A&G will be provided by consultant level staff (or those working under the direct clinical supervision of a consultant) working within the NHS and within existing BLMK providers. In addition, there is a short-term requirement to access A&G from consultant level staff outside of BLMK which has previously been used to release clinical teams’ capacity to focus on elective recovery. It is expected that the reliance on external Consultant capacity will reduce over time and an increased proportion of the A&G requests will be managed at local level, however the BLMK system requires the ability to restart this external support when needed.

The provision of the new service will commence on the 1st July 2023 and will be for a contractual period of two years with an option to extend by up to one year.