Safe And Reliable Transport Of Blood Samples

Background:

Our client is one of 14 Regional Health boards in Scotland and consists of 17 community hospitals across the region and several specialist acute hospitals.  The requirement for reliable compliant courier services is essential to support the timely diagnosis of samples across the region. 

TVS Supply chain solutions has held the contract with the NHS Health Board for medical courier services since 2010 during which time they successfully retained the work through a tender process.

Challenge:

This long-standing partnership is built on the National courier’s ability to provide consistently reliable services across the region and beyond.

The main part of the contract is the coordinated transfer of samples from over 100 surgeries across the region Monday to Friday and the delivery to the Laboratory in Aberdeen.    To optimize cost efficiency the surgeries are required to have their samples ready for collection each day at a predefined 15 minutes pick up window.   The courier location on each of the runs covering the region can be viewed online and at street level in real time by the NHS Contract manager, ensuring complete transparency is provided. 

In addition to real-time visibility, the contract manager is provided with Management Information incorporating a range of metrics and KPT’s including pick up times at each surgery. Further analysis is provided by a series of exception codes, including for example traffic congestion and surgery not ready. 

This information is used to drive further efficiencies throughout the service, for example through internal dialogue with surgeries or potential reconfirmation of the routes.   A clearly defined change management process is in place to support new surgeries or amalgamated surgeries.