Agenda item

35.1     The Committee considered an update report on the re-commissioning of the Non-Emergency Patient Transport Service (NEPTS) in Sussex. NEPTS is an eligibility driven service that is a statutory obligation for NHS commissioners to provide to transport patients to and from their healthcare appointments. (Post-meeting note: NHS Sussex has appointed ERS Transition Limited, trading as EMED Group, to be the new provider of Non-Emergency Patient Transport Services (NEPTS) for Sussex. The service is due to go live on 1^st April 2025).

35.2     The Committee asked what the lessons learnt from previous mobilisations were and what were the main areas of risk.

35.3     Maggie Keating, NHS Sussex Urgent and Emergency Care Programme Director, explained that one of the key lessons learnt by NHS Sussex had been from the procurement process, which had been far more robust and included much more market engagement than the previous procurement. The risks during mobilisation would be specific to the chosen provider, but generally they would likely be on whether the right vehicles, workforce, and technology were in place by April 2025. If a new provider was taking on the contract how the transition would be handled was another potential risk area.

35.4     The Committee asked how the performance of the new service would be monitored and whether potential issues would be spotted at an early stage.

35.5     Maggie Keating explained that there were a number of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) as part of the contract, alongside a number of quality and safety indicators. One of the key risks when Coperforma had the contract was that it was a small organisation that delivered the core booking service and relied on a number of subcontractors to transport patients. The new contract would not be like this and, whilst subcontractors were permitted, there was a requirement for the winning bidder to have a core turnover that was sufficient that the Sussex contract would not form the majority of its activity.  Harvey Winder, Urgent and Emergency Care Transformation Lead added that the minimum turnover requirement for bidders was at least double the value of the contract if they were to be considered.

35.6     The Committee asked how people would be signposted to the Single Point of Co-ordination (SPoC).

35.7     Harvey Winder explained that during mobilisation there would be an opportunity to develop ways to ensure patients were being sign-posted to the NEPTS, for example, working with acute trusts to include the NEPTS SPoC contact details in the text of patients’ outpatient appointment letters (outpatient appointments account for around 80% of NEPTS journeys). If patients who use the SPoC were deemed as not eligible for NEPTS, the SPoC call handler is required under the new service model to signpost them to other schemes including those that reduced or reimbursed the cost of private travel, such as the Healthcare Travel Costs Scheme (HTCS), or to other community providers of patient transport services.

35.8     The Committee asked how those with mental health problems would be supported under the new NEPTS contract.

35.9     Maggie Keating explained that the primary mental health conveyances (journeys from the point of contact with the patient to a designated place of safety) are the responsibility of South East Coast Ambulance Trust (SECAmb) as the emergency ambulance provider, but secondary journeys (those from the place of safety to a mental health provider’s care) and tertiary journeys (all other journeys including discharge and transfers of patients) of both detained and informal mental health patients would be dealt with by the new NEPTS provider Sussex Partnership Foundation Trust (SPFT), the primary mental health provider trust was currently arranging secondary and tertiary transport on an ad hoc basis using several private providers that are not under contract with the Trust, increasing costs and limiting performance monitoring. The new NEPTS would take responsibility for these cases away from SPFT, which would free up resource within the Trust, provide better value for money, and ensure mental health conveyances were monitored to the same standard as physical health conveyances through the KPIs.

35.10   The Committee asked how NHS Sussex was working to recruit volunteers given the crowded volunteer recruitment field.

35.11   Maggie Keating explained that as part of NHS Sussex’s pathfinder programme it had worked closely with the East Sussex voluntary sector to understand recruitment and retention issues. The ICB worked with Havens Community Cars (HCC) on ways to boost recruitment and retention of volunteer car drivers. HCC had a local videographer produce a promotional video and a local radio studio produced a jingle. As a result of the advertisement drive, HCC successfully increased the number of volunteer car drivers and increased the number of weekly journeys by over 20%. In addition, the video was going to be shared more widely with community organisations across the country to assist further recruitment. Harvey Winder added that HCC had demonstrated it had been able to use its status as a voluntary organisation to achieve excellent value for money in purchasing the video and jingle due to the willingness of vendors to offer exclusive deals in support community good will.

35.12   The Committee RESOLVED to:

1)    note the report;

2)    be provided an update on which organisation had been awarded the contract by email; and

3)    receive an update on the mobilisation and transition of the new contract at the June 2025 HOSC meeting.