Courier Logistics have been awarded a new contract with the Barnsley Hospital NHS, The new service entails collecting time sensitive samples from over a 120 Rotherham and Barnsley clinics and hospital sites and returning them back to the pathology laboratories for processing”

"Courier Logistics partnership with the NHS stretches back to 1996 when a service to provide the movement of sterilized equipment between hospitals was provided. Ever since then, various departments within the NHS have utilized our dedicated transport including the National Blood Service.

“Courier Logistics ensure that all aspects of the contract are met by providing a dedicated team which consists of a Contracts and Commercial Manager, Service Delivery Manager, Supervisor Driver and of course the drivers! This team is at the core of successful contract fulfillment to ensure a robust and continual service delivery.”

Please read the testimony below to get the detail:-

Barnsley and Rotherham Integrated Laboratories

The Trust Boards at Barnsley and Rotherham Hospitals have taken a strategic decision to merge their Pathology Laboratory functions, in order to secure economies of scale; increase productivity; drive down costs and improve service resilience.

Crucial to the merger strategy was the need to secure an integrated logistics service responsible for the collection of diagnostic samples from GP and Health Care Locations across the Barnsley and Rotherham Health Districts.

Following a competitive OJEU procurement exercise; the Pathology Merger Board approved a recommendation to award the contract to Courier Logistics Ltd.

Fundamental to the launch of the new service was the implementation of a change management process across a stakeholder community drawn from over 150 health care locations. Working with the 2 Trusts, Courier Logistics provided dedicated project management resource who were responsible for agreeing a new model of service provision with each individual stakeholder .

The timetable for the contract mobilisation process was extremely challenging and subject to the political tensions of stakeholders with competing demands. The Project Manager from Courier Logistics dealt with the mobilisation process in a highly professional way and involved the Pathology Departments throughout in agreeing an optimum profile of collection and delivery times.

The new service went live in Barnsley on the 1st April 2010 and on the 4 May 2010 in Rotherham. The transition to the new service has gone extremely smoothly and Courier Logistics have responded promptly and professionally to any operational problems.

Moving forward our Pathology Heads are keen to exploit the benefits of the new service, by ensuring that Practice Managers are making diagnostic samples available for each programmed collection. A smooth and phased flow of work into the Pathology Departments is essential to optimising the efficiency of their processes. Courier Logistics are supporting the Pathology Departments in this exercise by providing management information from their computerised track and trace system on the customer utilization profile of the new service

In summary the Pathology Departments in Barnsley and Rotherham are now able to offer their GP stakeholders a high quality and flexible service which guarantees sample integrity by operating against a maximum 2 hour journey time. The laboratories are benefiting from a smoothed workflow which better matches processing capacity with incoming samples. The implementation of a new contract model across a wide and diverse stakeholder community was potentially high risk. Courier Logistics have dealt with the change management issues in a highly professional way, and the Trusts are now well positioned to continue with their Pathology Integration Strategy