Medical Staff Bank
Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
In autumn 2017, NHSI announced that all Trusts must have a medical locum bank in place or in development by April 2018. Although Lancashire Teaching Hospitals had a successful managed service for medical locums, they did not have the resources to implement and manage a staff bank.
As one of four partners participating in the DoHSC staff bank pilot scheme, Medacs Healthcare were able to implement a new staff bank for Lancashire Teaching Hospitals within seven weeks.
Activities included the integration of new technology and a mobile app to manage the bank, enrolling and recruiting doctors onto the bank, designing processes and Standard Operating Procedures and issuing communication and training for Trust staff.
The staff bank went live on 26 March 2018.
Medacs Healthcare worked closely with the Trust’s existing workforce team to enrol locum and substantive staff, optimise fill rates and better engage bank workers with improved support, policies and processes. Trust staff were trained extensively by an on-site implementation team, consisting of five experienced project managers and business analysts. Activities included:
Our implementation team remained on site for six weeks after the ‘go live’ to support the Trust and transition to our staff bank team. To date we have:
The success at the Trust has prompted neighbouring Trusts to consider the benefits of a collaborative approach, with a second Medacs Healthcare Staff Bank Solution already live within another Trust in the region.
Fill rates on the Staff Bank at Lancashire were much higher compared to all other participants in the DHSC pilot and the project was a finalist in two HSJ awards in 2020; Workforce Innovation and Best NHS Consultancy Partnership.