The Scottish government is turning to private firms to provide contact tracers as pressure increases on Scotland’s Test and Protect system, healthandcare.scot can reveal.

Ministers initially pledged a target of up to 2,000 contact tracers but the Health Secretary Jeane Freeman said last week there were around 800 across the country.

When Nicola Sturgeon announced the test and trace system in May she pledged “all the work of identifying and tracing contacts will be done within Scotland’s NHS.”

Now, with NHS staff seconded to tracing duties returning to their original roles as the health service remobilises, the Scottish government has agreed a £1.3m deal with call centre company Ascensos for “immediate and rapid deployment” of additional contact tracers.

Linda Bauld, Professor of Public Health at Edinburgh University, said it is vital NHS public health teams “remain at the heart” of contact tracing.

The Scottish government insists the service is NHS-led and has clinical oversight.

England’s test and trace system has faced criticism from public health experts over the outsourcing of contact tracing.

Professor Bauld told healthandcare.scot the English system “isn't actually run by the NHS but instead divided between private companies and experienced local authority public health teams”, with the outsourced parts of the system “widely criticised due to poorer performance.”

She added: “[Scotland’s] Test and Protect is, in contrast, an NHS system and builds on decades of experience in contract tracing for other infectious diseases that we have within NHS boards and Health Protection Scotland.”

“While we all recognise the importance of expanding capacity this shouldn't be at the expense of expertise.

“So, any private call centre involvement needs to integrated with and supervised by colleagues with public health experience and qualifications.”

Motherwell-based Ascensos, which describes itself as ‘Europe's leading customer service outsourcing partner’, already runs NHS 24’s covid-19 helpline.

The contract to provide contact tracers was awarded without being advertised publicly because of the urgency of the coronavirus crisis.

NHS National Services Scotland (NSS), which agreed the deal, also confirmed another company is providing support, though no contract has been published online.

A spokesperson said: “As some NHS workers returned to their roles due to remobilisation NHS National Services Scotland agreed short term contracts to support the transition with two providers who have been supporting NSS since the start of the pandemic on PPE and with Public Health Scotland.”

The Scottish government refused to give details of the contracts, such as how many workers are being recruited.

Rising case numbers have heightened pressure on Scotland’s Test and Protect system, with weekly reports showing a steady increase in the number of people waiting more than two days to be contacted after testing positive.

Nearly 600 people with a positive test result had to wait more than 48 hours before a contact tracer spoke to them in the second week of October, up from fewer than 100 at the start of September.

Speaking on the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland radio programme last week, Health Secretary Jeane Freeman said there are currently around 800 active contact tracers but the government was “aiming for around 1,000 over the coming period”.

Questioned about delays in the Scottish Parliament by Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie, Nicola Sturgeon said it was “working well” but added “it is a relatively new system, so we have to strengthen it as we go along”.

In response to the news of the contract, Mr Rennie said: “Hiring more contact tracers is essential to cope with the long delays that hundreds of people have been experiencing. Waits of more than two days are dangerous when every moment counts with this virus.

“But this contract will not be enough if it is just filling the gaps left by staff returning to their original jobs.

“The fact that the SNP government are outsourcing this work is sign that they are struggling to deliver an effective tracing system especially when they have previously criticised the use of such outsourcing by the Conservative government.”

Hugh Pennington, Emeritus Professor of Bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen, told healthandcare.scot an effective tracing operation is “by far the most important measure to control the virus”.

Professor Pennington, who has chaired inquiries into E. coli outbreaks in Scotland and Wales, questioned whether the need for urgent recruitment of contact tracers was due to increases in positive cases or NHS boards facing additional demands because of their new responsibility to provide flu vaccinations.

Scottish Labour health and social care spokesperson Monica Lennon MSP said: “With the Scottish government failing to deliver on its promise to recruit 2,000 contact tracers, outsourcing looks like a desperate move to rescue Test and Protect.

“This comes months after asking members of the public to express an interest in the work, with 20,000 people putting themselves forward including retired healthcare workers. The opportunity to draw on their skills was missed.

“For weeks, Scottish Labour has been calling on the government to recruit more contact tracers but they have not done enough to build up capacity and expand routine testing to key workers. 

“Contact tracing performance has been going in the wrong direction and that’s down to the Scottish government’s complacency and dithering. 

“SNP ministers may be turning to outsourcing, but the buck stops with them to expand Test and Protect and make it work efficiently and effectively across Scotland.”

 

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