NCL OCVC Procurement

Practices will be able to start indicating which supplier they would prefer from 11 January 2023 – End March 2023 via the OCVC Practice Choice Form.

We are asking for practices to ensure that partners, PCN colleagues and other decision makers have agreed each practice choice.

Next steps:

GP Choices: January 2023 – March 2023 (Update – this is an extension from the previous date of end of February)

Supplier Showcase: Early February 2023

Contracting and Transition: April 2023 onwards

This can vary, depending on supplier rollout and practice need. Your service will need to be ready to go live on 1 April 2023, but some may be able to happen before/after this date.

Its important that choices and transition are managed sensitively and pragmatically to ensure 1) no double running and 2) no gaps in service.

You can change suppliers from three months after the service starts in your practice to one of the other two recommended OCVC suppliers offered by NCL ICB.​

The contracts are for two years, with an optional third year.​

The NCL Digital First team are asking suppliers to run a two-week showcase in between Monday 6 February – Friday 17 February. 

There will be live and recorded webinars and demonstrations for practice staff to drop-in. The sessions will be advertised at different times of the day and repeated throughout the 2 weeks. Each session will be recorded and accessible at any time.

In parallel, there is with further supplier information that can be accessed here that will be will regularly updated.

• AccuRx
• eConsult
• EMIS
• FootFall
• PATCHS

Some practices within NCL have direct contracts with providers such as Dr iQ, but these contracts are not managed by NCL ICB or NCL Digital First. This means that they are out of scope of the above question.

• eConsult 
• FootFall
• PATCHS

If your supplier is one of the three new suppliers NCL ICB offer, then yes and there will be no change to the service you currently receive. However, if you wish to move to another recommended supplier then you are free to do so.

If your current supplier is not one of the ones NCL ICB offer, then you will have to change supplier to one of the recommended three.

Yes. NCL Digital First are planning a two week ‘showcase’ period so practices can see the systems and ask questions directly to the suppliers. 

Information about the showcase will be made available from late January. This site will be regularly updated with more information, access to demo/sandbox system, and dedicated supplier inboxes for practice queries.

The 2-week supplier showcase (6-17 February 2023) will include live webinars that will cover different aspects of the products functionality.

Webinar sessions will be repeated and recorded so you can still access them if you are unable to attend.

The choice* you make will need to be submitted via the Microsoft Form on this link OCVC Practice Choice Form. You will need to inform us by the end of March whether you are staying with your current supplier or switching (to another supplier). The person submitting the form should be a Practice Manager, Business Manager or GP Partner.

We are strongly encouraging practices within a PCN to all choose the same OCVC supplier. The recent Fuller Report emphasised the importance of the future development of Enhanced Access and eHubs, and practices within a PCN all having the same OCVC provider will give a firm foundation to these developments, as well as provide resilience within the local system. Please work with your PCN and neighbouring practices to choose the supplier you feel will work best for your practice, your PCN and your patients.

If after using one of the providers and you would like to switch, you can do so after three months to one of the other two OCVC providers offered by NCL ICB.

*If a practice decides that they want to go with an OCVC provider who is not one of the three offered to them by the NCL ICB, they can. However, no new contract should start before 1 April 2023 to avoid cost double running and gaps in service. The NCL ICB will provide funding equivalent to the budgeted cost per patient directly to the practice. If the chosen supplier costs more than that, practices must fund the extra themselves.

 If you choose outside of the three suppliers, practices must:

• Read the FAQs on NCL OCVC procurement for further details.
• Complete the OCVC Practice Choice Form to indicate their choice to buy OCVC services directly.
• Choose a supplier from the national Digital First OCVC Buying Catalogue (https://buyingcatalogue.digital.nhs.uk/catalogue-solutions). The National Procurement Hub is available to advise (https://www.england.nhs.uk/digitaltechnology/digital-primary-care/commercial-procurement-hub/ ).
• Take responsibility for all contracting and contract management.
• Take responsibility for all clinical and data safety assurances.

All suppliers that are on the national Digital First OCVC Framework have proven to NHS England that their product meets clinical safety standards. The supplier will have met the DCB0129 standard.

The deploying organisation (GP surgery in this case) will need to ensure that clinical risk management activities (via a DCB0160) have been done for the application (in this case OCVC) being deployed and used for healthcare purposes.

Following a successful and rigorous procurement process, NCL ICB will do the DCB0160 on behalf of NCL practices for only these 3 recommended suppliers ONLY:

1. eConsult
2. PATCHS
3. FootFall

The clinical safety cases will be updated for only the 3 recommended suppliers, by NCL’s Operational Clinical Safety Officer as and when there are updates to the supplier’s software to ensure compliance and safety assurance in line with the safety standards.

Should you wish to choose a supplier outside of the 3 NCL recommend suppliers, then you would need to undertake your own DCB0160 for your practice and cover all associated governance and potential costs

Please contact the Digital First Team if you require any assistance regarding clinical safety standards nclicb.digitalfirst@nhs.net

More information on the standards can be found on: DCB0160 and DCB0129.

NCL ICB will only pay for one OCVC supplier per practice. ​

However, if a practice, PCN, federation or borough wishes to, they can, at their own cost, contract another supplier via the Digital First OCVC Buying Catalogue on top of the one they have through the ICB. All additional costs must be met by the practice.

https://buyingcatalogue.digital.nhs.uk/catalogue-solutions​

If you are buying an OCVC solution because you do not want one of the ones offered by NCL Digital First, your practice can claim up to the equivalent cost of 23p per patient in funding for an OCVC service, but practices will be responsible for any costs over this amount.

The National Procurement Hub can advise practices, PCNs, Federations, Boroughs how to purchase from the buying catalogue.

In general, the procurement thresholds for the Digital Buying Catalogue are as follows:

Less than £40k – Direct Award. Any practice can directly contract with a provider of choice from the buying catalogue. The national hub can help advise

Between £40k and £250k – On Catalogue. A group of practices can purchase OCVC products via an On Catalogue competition. This would need a basic specification and a desktop exercise. Advice and guidance is available via the National Hub.

Please remember that your practice will be responsible for:

• Procurement and contracting (Each practice will have to directly contract with the supplier)
• Contract management and performance
• Clinical and data safety case
• Additional costs

You can find out more about the National Procurement Hub here: https://www.england.nhs.uk/digitaltechnology/digital-primary-care/commercial-procurement-hub/.​

​You can also find more information on the Direct Award procedure if you want to procure outside the recommended suppliers here: https://gpitbjss.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/BG/pages/1846870055/Direct+Award​

The OCVC Working Group asked GP practices which OCVC features they felt were most important in the running of their practices and this informed the design and content of the procurement.

The core and desirable functions were fed into the National Procurement Hub’s DFOCVC Framework, and the Framework indicated which suppliers on it met those requirements.​

A specification and evaluation questions were developed by the OCVC Working Group.

Nine suppliers met the requirements, and all nine were invited to tender bids.​

Of the nine suppliers invited to tender, six suppliers put a bid in.​

The Digital First team worked with the GPPA, Digital Clinical Leads, the ICB and Healthwatch to come up with an evaluation panel.

The evaluation panel consisted of*:

• Clinical representation (Appointed independently via the GPPA)
• Clinical Safety representation
• Primary Care Commissioning​ representation
• Patient Voice representation
• Financial representation

*Please see make-up of the OCVC working group for the wider stakeholder group that contributed to the shape and content of the procurement

The ICB strongly encourages and recommends that all practices within a PCN choose the same OCVC supplier.

Each practice is responsible for informing Redmoor of their choice but having the same supplier within a PCN means that it will be easier to work together to create an eHub or Enhanced Access. 

This will lead to a smoother, more streamlined point of access for patients, as well as creating resilience in your local system.​

No. But we do strongly recommend that all practices within a PCN choose the same OCVC supplier for the reasons noted above.

Yes. They have already had some direct communications about the procurement, as well as being included in the communications that have gone to GP practices as well as represented on the OCVC Working Group.

You do not have to; however, it is strongly advised that you do as having different OCVC suppliers within a PCN will limit the success of any eHub or Enhanced Access work that happens at a PCN level. 

Definitely. Talking together to discuss how you can best work together will help you make the right collective decision for your practice and your PCN.

The funding for OCVC comes down through a specific Digital First budget from NHS England.

It depends. NCL Digital First has a price envelope pence per patient. All the 3 recommended suppliers are fully covered within this budget and as such there is no charge to the practice in choosing one of the three suppliers.

In general, most suppliers on the National Buying Catalogue charge within the allocated budget, however additional costs maybe accrued if a practice decided to contract independently outside of the three recommended suppliers.

If you choose one of the three suppliers offered by NCL Digital First, then no, you will not have to pay anything.​

If you do not want to choose one of the three suppliers offered by NCL Digital First, your practice will need to procure a service directly from the Digital First OCVC Framework.

https://digital.nhs.uk/services/digital-care-services-catalogue/digital-first-online-consultation-and-video-consultation-framework ​

You will receive funding equivalent to the budgeted cost of 23p per patient for a different supplier, but you will have to pay any associated procurement, clinical and data safety, and contract management costs. 

If your chosen supplier costs more than the budgeted cost per patient, you/your practice will have to pay for the excess costs.​

No.

All OCVC suppliers will be expected to give practices the change management and training support they need to transition to the new supplier which will include all pre-transition training and ‘on boarding’ support. This will usually last about 2-4 weeks before a new system goes live.

You will be contacted by your new supplier to arrange this. You can also ask Redmoor Health for support as part of their existing support contract in NCL. You can also reach out to your PCN’s Digital Champion.​

You can call your OCVC supplier directly. They will work with your old supplier to ensure a smooth transition

The London Digital First team have developed an Online Consultations (OC) Handbook. They collaborated with clinical leads, change managers and practice staff to ensure the information in the Handbook is relevant and easy to use. The document is also interactive, so users can navigate directly to an area of interest.

The Handbook aims to support practices to:

• promote online consultation tools with local communities and patients
• improve understanding by learning from good practice examples
• better adapt process flow to meet the needs of patients
• increase OC utilisation.

For any supplier queries or to organise a demonstration of a product, please contact the relevant account manager:

eConsult – michael.moc@econsult.health

PATCHS – georgina.blair@oneadvanced.com

Tel: 0161 672 9778
Email: support@redmoorhealth.co.uk

They will be able to log in via the NHS App.

This is also an optional feature as part of the AI’s known as Urgency AI and is based on machine learning looking for triggers such as what patients say for example – https://help.patchs.ai/hc/en-gb/articles/360058979713-Urgency-AI

We have received over 275,000 reviews with an average star rating off 4.5/5 and GP practices have reported that only 22% of requests required face-to-face consultations.

They are quite different systems, patchs uses free text for the patient to communicate as well as language translation. We have user accounts so a patient does not need to input each time. We use artifical intelligence to both triage and suggest questionnaires, we also offer bulk messaging and 2 way messaging through the system. You can either sms or email the patient, we also save notes as free text. Another key difference is demand management where you can say how many requests you can handle per day or even per hour.

Yes, to add halo value we have sms, email, video and telephony.

Yes through our toolbar, there is a feature to call patients through the telephony system and switch to video visa versa.

https://intercom.help/econsult/en/articles/5300891-click-to-call-audio-telephony-from-the-toolbar

Yes, all part of eConsult core offer.

Yes you can pick and choose which requests are available/unavailable with Patient Form Control and schedule this to recur at the same times every day or for special events.

Yes there is a setting called Form Routing which allows you to route certain requests types to teams/groups of users on the dashboard.

Our FootFall Connect and EMIS Integration demo video can be found here: https://youtu.be/ZTZdEYaY1k4 where you will be able to see the integration and toolbar in action.