Commercial partnerships
The commercial services team work with external clients to provide key services, which create profitable income that is then reinvested back into our own frontline services here at EEAST, with a view to providing funding to develop more innovation opportunities across the Trust.
Our commercial services include CallEEAST, TrainEEAST and the National Performance Advisory Group (NPAG) which are based within the Trust.
CallEEAST is our non-emergency and commercial contact centre, offering an array of contact centre solutions to commercial organisations and NHS trusts.
The team supported 80 separate contracts, handling more than 850,000 calls last year, and aimed to continually increase the portfolio and support partners to develop customer and patient focussed services.
CallEEAST provided the call handling and eligibility screening for our non-emergency patient transport services as well as additional services such as, virtual receptionists, bespoke inbound call handling and signposting services. The team supported a range of partners within the NHS and commercial organisations, such as Birmingham Community Health Care, GP surgeries, solicitors, and Iceland.
TrainEEAST, the Trusts commercial training department, trained over 5,000 people last year in pre-hospital emergency care and 999 emergency protocols.
Customers and partners included businesses, NHS trusts, police, social care, GP surgeries, airports, hotels, and others.
The most popular courses that TrainEEAST offered were lifesaving interventions in the workplace. These included First Aid at Work, Emergency First Aid at Work, Basic Life Support, Intermediate Life Support, First Responder Emergency Care, Moving and Handling, Police Firearms Medic (D13), Falls Intervention Training along with re-qualifications and refreshers.
During 2022/23 TrainEEAST recorded its sixth successive year without a contract loss, and was awarded the highest level of trust status with its awarding body partners.
Customer satisfaction is rated at Good or Excellent by 98.5% of customers.
TrainEEAST gained Preferred Supplier status with the National Framework for the provision of pre-hospital emergency medicine training to blue light emergency services.
An important addition to the TrainEEAST suite of courses was mental health first aid offered to internal groups and external customers.
The National Performance Advisory Group, bring people together, nationally, to share best practice and showcase industry developments across the NHS, enabling innovation and efficiency.
The focus was to expand and enable network growth and continue to promote innovation throughout our NHS across a range of specialisms.
In 2022/23, the National Performance Advisory Group became closer to EEAST through structural changes, having previously operated at arms length, enabling synergies to be established across the commercial departments.
It has continued to grow its networks and membership as well as regained capacity within the team following recruitment. NPAG continues to receive great feedback from members.
