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Team of the year

Winner: 111 Bid team

As an ambulance service pioneering new services in urgent and emergency care, retaining the NHS111 contract was high on our corporate agenda this year.

Having spent 5 years already understanding the urgent care needs of our communities and trailblazing a service that is not only fit for purpose, the service supports the wider healthcare environment by reducing calls to 999 and A&E attendances, and identifying new care pathways that are improving patient outcomes and experience.

Having an integrated 999 and NHS111 operations centre has enabled NEAS to make huge strides in the type of services we can deliver for patients. And with patients at the very heart of everything we do, once the tender was released to bid for the next 5 year NHS111 contract, the Trust felt it critical to ensure that our bid brought together our wealth of expertise, skills, resources, resilience and innovation to help demonstrate why we were the best provider for the job.

Working to a challenging and ambitious timescale, a team was formed to develop our bid over five weeks at the turn of the year when many people were taking time out for Christmas and New Year. 

Lead by two directors, a core team co-ordinated the bid with critical contributions and support from across the organisation.  Representatives were involved from commercial development, project management, finance, human resources, IM&T, emergency operations centre, clinical and contracting, to name but a few.

To bridge the gaps between their desks and locations, for those key weeks the team joined a daily meeting to meticulously work through their detailed project planning and ensure that they created a high quality response, which promised to champion innovation.

Bidding is a difficult process as it has a binary outcome; you win or lose.  However, the team put NEAS in the very best light to those commissioning the service to secure the bid by showcasing all the great work that the 111 service does and the innovation that NEAS will bring to the service over the next five years.  Indeed, they scored 100% on several of the tender questions. 

We celebrated winning the bid earlier this year, retaining jobs, services and our position as an NHS provider that can help to deliver evolving healthcare services and pathways fit for the future.

The new service, which launched this month, is designed to ensure that where possible, patients’ problems are dealt with on their first call, drawing from the skills of a number of expert clinicians. Staff will have access to a range of real time information, including a summary of GP held patients records and details of local services such as GP extended hour’s schemes and community pharmacies.