The NHS Workforce Alliance Insourcing framework, which is designed to support trusts in reducing their waiting list backlogs, has been extended until 31st October 2025.
More than 7.5 million people in England are waiting to start treatment, and NHS trusts and ICBs/ICSs may be looking to insourcing models as a way of managing the backlog and bringing down waiting times.
Insourcing is a term used to describe a range of medical and clinical services which are deployed to use spare, out-of-hours capacity within a trust, alongside its existing provisions. The intention is to bolster service outputs and improve efficiency. Such services are typically provided by medical or clinical providers who can provide the specialist capabilities required to deliver an end-to-end service, including clinical governance and oversight.
Using such a service is one way trusts can cut the backlog while ensuring they retain capacity planning in-house.
Suppliers have been shown to perform best when they have smooth handovers from the teams that are already in place – that way, staff provided by the suppliers feel like an extension of the existing team.
Insourced Services to support the Provision of Healthcare Services (RM6276) now boasts 62 suppliers with capabilities spanning more than 45 different clinical service lines including, Cardiology Diagnostics, Dermatology, Diagnostic Imaging, Endoscopy Services, Ophthalmology Services, General and Specialist Surgery, to name a few.
Call-offs under the framework are made as sub-contracts to the NHS Standard Contract with suppliers agreeing to comply with the terms of the General Conditions and Service Conditions of the NHS Standard Contract as far as they are relevant to the provision of the services by the supplier.
A total of 66 NHS organisations have utilised the agreement to date with more than £50m in business having been transacted via the framework since its inception in November 2021.