Integrated Urgent Care Tenders: How to Win Out-of-Hours and Primary Care Contracts

October 25, 2025

🚑 Integrated Urgent Care Tenders: How to Win Out-of-Hours and Primary Care Contracts

Integrated Urgent Care (IUC) procurement blends clinical assurance, digital maturity, and community-based delivery. If you’re competing for out-of-hours (OOH), Urgent Treatment Centre (UTC) or primary-care access frameworks, this playbook shows how to translate safe practice into the KPIs, governance, and value language NHS evaluators reward.

Providers bidding for urgent and primary-care services can strengthen their submissions with focused support across sectors — from home care bid writing and domiciliary care bid writing that underpins step-down flow, to learning disability and complex care bid writing that evidences continuity and escalation. To tighten scoring logic, teams often pair our Bid Review & Proofreading with Editable Method Statements, Editable Strategies, and targeted Bid Strategy Training.

🧭 What IUC Commissioners Are Really Buying

IUC brings together NHS 111, Clinical Assessment Services (CAS), out-of-hours primary care, UTCs/walk-in centres, and links to community pharmacy, UCR (Urgent Community Response), ambulance services and same-day hubs. Procurement models vary, but scoring themes don’t. Panels are buying:

Clinical safety at pace — rapid triage, right clinician first time, safe streaming and handovers.
Digital interoperability — DoS/111 integration, NHSmail/IG compliance, ePrescribing/eDischarge where relevant, robust audit trails.
System flow impact — reduced ED attendances, improved “hear/see & treat” rates, better admission avoidance.
Workforce resilience — rota cover for unsocial hours, multi-disciplinary skill-mix, supervision and escalation.
Experience & equity — quick access, clear signposting, inclusive communication, and measured satisfaction.

To win, your bid has to connect everyday operational discipline to these system outcomes — with numbers, not just narratives.

⚙️ The IUC Scoring Blueprint (Five Pillars)

1) Clinical Governance & Risk

Named clinical leadership: GP/ANS/ACP oversight with on-call arrangements, clear decision rights, and interfaces with 111/CAS, UTC clinical leads and ED.
Safe streaming SOP: red flags, time-to-clinical-contact thresholds, safeguarding prompts, deterioration tools (NEWS2, paediatric cues).
RCA & learning loops: rapid review of incidents/near misses, trend analysis, actions tracked to closure.
Medicines management: PGDs, eMAR/ePrescribing where applicable, controlled stationary processes, cold-chain.

2) Digital & Data Readiness

DSPT “Standards Met” status, named Caldicott Guardian, IG training compliance rates.
Interoperability: Directory of Services (DoS) updates, 111 & CAS integration, NHSmail, clinical systems (EMIS/TPP/Adastra) data flows, SNOMED coding discipline.
Dashboards: live ops KPIs (time to contact, abandonment, revalidation), monthly quality (incidents per 1,000 contacts, safeguarding, complaints).

3) Access, Capacity & Rota Resilience

Demand modelling: hour-by-hour profiles; surge plans for weekends/holidays/weather spikes.
Skill-mix: GPs, ANPs/ACPs, ENPs/ECPs, pharmacists, clinical navigators — with escalation map.
Continuity controls: minimum cover, rapid backfill rules, locum onboarding/IG verification, standby tiers.

4) Integration & Partnerships

Pathway alignment: 111 warm transfers, CAS call-backs, UCR two-hour response alignment, community pharmacy referrals, mental health/crisis lines, dental signposting.
Handovers: structured SBAR, shared notes, eDischarge with safety-netting, booking into same-day hubs/UTC slots.
Governance in common: joint audits with ED/ambulance/UCR, place-based quality meetings, data-sharing agreements.

5) Outcomes, Experience & Value

System metrics: ED diverts, “hear & treat” and “see & treat” rates, admission avoidance, ambulance dispatch reduction.
Quality: incidents per 1,000 contacts, recontact within 48h, complaint themes, safeguarding outcomes.
Experience & equity: response times by deprivation/ethnicity/need; accessible formats; interpreter use; PREMs themes and improvement actions.

📐 A Copy-Ready Answer Framework for IUC Bids

Context: Describe demand patterns and risk profile (OOH peaks, paeds, frailty, mental health, minor injury/illness mix).
Model of Care: Streaming, clinical assessment, face-to-face, virtual, home visiting (if relevant), safety-netting.
Governance & Workforce: clinical leadership, supervision cadence, skill-mix, training, observed competence.
Digital & Data: DSPT, system integration, dashboards, audits, IG incident handling.
Outcomes & Value: KPIs, trend improvements, prevention and flow impact, equity actions.

Finish each answer with a one-sentence “tender line” that makes the value explicit:

“Nurse-led streaming with GP oversight lifted ‘hear & treat’ from 26%→39% while cutting ED referrals 14% quarter-on-quarter.”

📊 The KPIs That Move the Needle (and Score)

Access: median time-to-clinical-contact; 95th percentile time; abandonment rate.
Clinical effectiveness: “hear & treat” / “see & treat” proportions; ED conversions; admission avoidance.
Safety: incident rate per 1,000 contacts; recontact within 48 hours; safeguarding identification rate and time-to-action.
Workforce: fill rate by hour band; supervision compliance; training & observed competence completion.
Experience & equity: friends & family/PREMs; interpreter use; accessible info provision; performance by IMD decile.

Show three consecutive quarters and one sentence on what changed. Quant + narrative = credibility.

🧪 Mini Case Studies You Can Adapt

Case A — “Hear & Treat” Uplift via Clinical Navigation

Context: High ED referrals from 111 transfer; inconsistent clinician callbacks.

Approach: Introduced senior clinical navigator at peak times; added red-flag prompts; created paediatric advice micro-pathways; daily DoS review.

Evidence: “Hear & treat” rose from 24%→38% in 12 weeks; ED referrals fell 12%; recontact unchanged.

Tender line: “Senior navigation lifted safe ‘hear & treat’ by 14 points while reducing ED referrals 12% with no rise in recontacts.”

Case B — UTC Minor Injury/Illness Flow

Context: Variable waits; poor streaming; spikes at weekends.

Approach: Rapid triage within 15 minutes; ENP-led minor injury bay; x-ray rostering aligned to peaks; live wait-time display.

Evidence: 95th percentile wait cut from 190→110 minutes; LWBS (left without being seen) down 41%; complaints down by half.

Tender line: “ENP triage and peak rostering reduced the longest waits by 80 minutes and halved complaints.”

Case C — Out-of-Hours Prescribing Safety

Context: Discrepancies in urgent antibiotic prescribing.

Approach: PGD refresh; pharmacist call-backs for high-risk groups; e-template prompts; monthly audit with feedback loops.

Evidence: Prescribing errors down 52%; reconsults for the same condition down 18%.

Tender line: “Pharmacist call-backs and PGD tightening cut prescribing errors by half and reduced reconsults 18%.”

🧱 Workforce & Supervision: Making Unsocial Hours Sustainable

Panels look for evidence that you can reliably staff nights, weekends and bank holidays without quality dips.

Skill-mix grids: minimum GP/ACP/ENP/pharmacist presence by hour; rationale by demand curve.
Supervision: named clinical supervisor per shift; escalation tree; reflective debrief for complex cases.
Competency: OSCE/DOPS for streaming, minor injury assessment, paediatric red flags, mental health triage.
Retention: coaching, peer case reviews, study leave and CPD linked to urgent-care skills.

Express this as a one-page matrix with completion and observed competence rates; evaluators reward practice, not promises.

💻 Digital Interoperability: The Hidden Differentiator

Beyond DSPT, bids must show practical data plumbing:

111/CAS integration: warm transfer logic, callback SLAs, outcome capture and feedback loops.
DoS governance: daily accuracy checks; agreed escalation when services offline; resilient signposting.
Clinical systems: SNOMED coding, shared care records, e-discharge to GP, audit trail on all edits/access.
Dashboards: ops live view + monthly quality pack with commentary and actions.

Anchor each statement with a micro-metric: “DSPT Standards Met since 2023; IG training 98%; zero IG breaches in last 12 months.”

🧩 Equality, Accessibility & Safety-Netting (Often Under-Scored)

IUC contracts emphasise inclusive access and robust safety-netting. Strengthen your response with:

Accessible comms: Easy Read, translation/interpreter rates, BSL/pathways, SMS follow-ups.
Safety-netting scripts: condition-specific advice, return prompts, pharmacy/111/UCR alternatives.
Equity monitoring: performance by IMD decile/ethnicity/age; targeted improvement actions.

Convert into a tender line: “Interpreter use up 31% with median callback maintained; satisfaction among non-English speakers improved from 82%→92%.”

🧮 Value Messaging That Resonates with Evaluators

Flow: uplift “hear/see & treat” → fewer ED referrals → reduced ambulance conveyance → bed days saved.
Safety: RCA loops, prescribing audits, red-flag prompts → fewer incidents and recontacts.
Productivity: better rostering and skill-mix → lower cost per contact without quality loss.
Transparency: dashboards and joint audits → reduced commissioner oversight burden.

Close with a sentence linking value to outcomes: “Our navigation model saves 7–11 ambulance conveyances per 1,000 calls while maintaining recontact below 3%.”

🧰 Reusable Assets You Can Drop Into IUC Bids

Urgent Care Clinical Governance Strategy — escalation maps, RCA templates, audit calendar (see our Editable Strategies).
Streaming & Triage Method Statement — red-flag prompts, time-to-contact thresholds, paeds/frailty cues (see Editable Method Statements).
Digital & IG Pack — DSPT statement, IG roles, NHSmail/screens, data-sharing agreements.
Workforce Matrix — hour-by-hour staffing, supervision cadence, competency sign-offs.
Quality Dashboard — access, safety, experience, equity; with quarter-on-quarter commentary.

We can stitch these into a coherent narrative and perform a final scoring pass via our Proofreading & Compliance Checks, or build them with you through Bid Strategy Training.

🧠 Common Pitfalls (and Swift Fixes)

❌ Promising fast access without capacity maths. ✔ Include demand curves and hour-by-hour rota logic.
❌ Listing software without outcomes. ✔ Add the improvement metric (e.g., “–42% med errors after eMAR”).
❌ Policy dump with no practice. ✔ Show one RCA example → learning → action closed.
❌ Weak equity detail. ✔ Evidence interpreter use, accessible formats, and performance by IMD decile.
❌ No handover rigour. ✔ Include SBAR handover template and safety-net script.

🧭 Key Takeaways

🏥 IUC bids are won on safe access at speed, digital assurance, and measurable system impact.
📊 Keep KPIs tight — time-to-contact, “hear/see & treat,” ED diversion, recontact, incidents per 1,000 contacts.
⚙️ Rota resilience and skill-mix must match the demand curve, with supervision baked in.
💻 Interoperability (DoS/111/CAS, clinical systems, NHSmail) is a major differentiator.
🤝 Show partnership with UCR, pharmacy, ED and same-day hubs through joint audits and data.

If you need to convert your operational strengths into a high-scoring IUC narrative, we can help via Bid Writer – Home Care, Bid Writer – Domiciliary Care, Bid Writer – Learning Disability, Bid Writer – Complex Care, a rapid pass via Bid Review & Proofreading, or capability-building through our Bid Strategy Training.