Incident Management

Description

Anchor Hanover Group is England’s largest not-for-profit provider of housing and care for older people, operating 120 care homes across England. These services support over 6000 older people with a range of residential care needs where safety, dignity, independence, accessibility and regulatory assurance are central to day-to-day operations.

Purpose of this market engagement

Anchor Hanover Group is undertaking preliminary market engagement to understand the capability, maturity and delivery options available in the market for incident, safeguarding, complaints and quality management across its care home business.

This notice forms part of a wider care technology pre-market engagement exercise that also includes nurse call and enquiries management. Anchor is considering these areas together to understand the market landscape, potential integration points and future delivery options across its care technology roadmap.

This activity enables market research to help Anchor define requirements, build the business case and design the target state architecture by determining the extent to which incident management is a specialist application that integrates to other systems or could be consolidated into a core care platform. It does not start a procurement process, does not commit Anchor to any future competition and supplier responses will not be scored or used to select or exclude suppliers.

Problem and opportunity

Anchor operates a distributed care home estate and needs a consistent, auditable and insight-led approach to the capture, triage, investigation, oversight and learning of incidents, safeguarding concerns, complaints, compliments and quality events. The opportunity is to replace the legacy solution and strengthen resident safety, regulatory assurance, operational control and organisational learning. Anchor wants to improve understanding of how modern solutions can support end-to-end case management, timely escalation, regulatory reporting, action tracking and enterprise-level insight.

Indicative scope and areas of interest

The potential scope is expected to focus on regulated care home operations in England, with capability that can operate across multiple homes, regions and central support functions. Anchor is interested in both specialist best-of-breed solutions and broader care governance platforms, including where these integrate with retained digital care planning, medication management, workforce, resident, finance, document management and enterprise reporting services.

Anchor invites suppliers to comment on how their solutions could support future specialist care models, such as nursing, step-down or short-stay recovery, without replacing the core platform.

Anchor also wants to understand where supplier solutions could support comparable needs across its social housing business, including relevant housing processes, assurance, case management, reporting, learning and shared enterprise capabilities, while recognising that care remains the primary focus of this engagement.

Anchor is also interested in suppliers’ views on the art of the possible. Suppliers are encouraged to challenge assumptions, identify where the proposed scope may be too narrow or too broad, and explain how proven market practice, automation, analytics or responsible AI could improve safety, assurance, colleague experience and decision-making.

Headline capability domains

1. Event capture and intake: capability to record incidents, safeguarding concerns, complaints, compliments, near misses and other configured events consistently at the point of need.

2. Triage, classification and escalation: configurable workflows to assess severity, actual or potential harm, regulatory significance and the appropriate route for review or escalation.

3. Case management and investigation: auditable workflows for assignment, investigation, collaboration, approval, closure, reopening and oversight across local, regional and central teams.

4. Safeguarding, complaints and serious incidents: support for confidential safeguarding processes, complaint handling, serious incident coordination, external engagement and evidence management.

5. Regulatory and statutory reporting: capability to support evidence capture, decision-making and completion tracking for CQC notifications, Duty of Candour, safeguarding referrals, RIDDOR and other relevant reporting needs.

6. Actions, assurance and learning: capability to create, assign, track, verify and evidence corrective and preventive actions, share learning and monitor whether improvements have been effective.

7. Reporting, insight and analytics: operational, quality, compliance and governance reporting across home, regional and enterprise levels, including trend analysis, thematic insight and data provision for enterprise reporting.

8. Integration, security and implementation: secure integration with retained systems, appropriate role-based access, auditability, information governance controls, implementation approach, configuration model and ongoing support requirements.

9. AI, innovation and advanced insight: capability to leverage AI, advanced analytics and emerging technologies through the solution itself or via partner ecosystems, enabling continuous innovation, improved decision-making and enhanced business outcomes.