Contingency and Interim Histopathology Services - Processing of histology specimens from receipt of cassette to dispatch of slides

In 2018, Royal Papworth Hospital (RPH) will move to a brand new, state-of-the-art hospital on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. The vision for Pathology services on the Campus are to collaborate with Cambridge University Hospital (CUH) to develop a shared service working together to realise benefits, whilst RPH maintain specialist cardiothoracic expertise in both routine and research areas. In order to share the Histopathology service on the campus a larger footprint is required; unfortunately the space planned for the merge of two Histopathology services has been delayed and will not be ready in time for the RPH move in September 2018.

RPH will continue to work with CUH on the shared vision for a joined up Histopathology service but as the New Papworth Hospital (NPH) has no provision for a laboratory the hospital intend to tender for these services as a contingency and interim until the space required is available.

NPH requires a Histopathology and Tissue Bank service that supports their specialist clinical services and research. The service must be provided to comply with the commissioning framework for services such as transplantation and meet diagnostic timelines required for thoracic oncology services.

The work has been split between what must be completed on the campus and what will require processing off-site to support a full end to end Histopathology service at NPH whilst space is found to merge with CUH.

The 2016/17 annual Histology workload amounts to around 4,145 histology requests (equating to approximately 6,301 samples, 15,109 blocks and 60,123 slides) . To safely and effectively deliver these volumes, from receipt to reporting, requires an integrated team of Consultant Histo/Cytopathologists, Biomedical Scientists (BMS), Medical Laboratory Assistants (MLA) and Administrative staff.

In terms of Histopathology and Cytopathology laboratory services the Trust is seeking the following deliverables from within this Tender process:

• Processing of histology specimens from receipt of cassette to dispatch of slides

Additional information: This notice is to engage with the market to find out if there is any capacity and capability to provide NPH with processing of histology specimens from receipt of cassette to dispatch of slides that meets the needs of clinicians and patients based on current turnaround times. Also to meet the needs of tissue banking which supports current research projects and cardiorespiratory research locally.

The services will be required as a contingency and interim until the space required is available at CUH.