Medical Staff Bank

Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Background

Medacs Healthcare has been working in partnership with Lancashire Teaching Hospitals for over 20 years, implementing on-site managed service programmes, working to control charge and pay rates and delivering significant savings for the Trust. In line with NHSI directives, the Trust needed to establish a new medical staff bank by April 2018 and was keen to participate in the Department of Health’s new Flexible Bank Pilot programme.

The Challenge

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.

The Solution

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.

Approach

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:

Enrolling doctors to the bank. There are now 840 doctors registered with the bank covering a wide range of grades and specialties. The new bank was promoted using a visible presence on site, with our team on hand to support with registration, IT system demos and queries.
Training Trust staff to use the system. We ran many sessions over four weeks, including follow-up sessions for those who wanted further training.
Working in partnership with the Trust to manage the communication about new processes to both the doctors and internal staff.
Designing new booking processes and standard operating procedures.
Working with rota coordinators and budget holders to implement the new processes.

Total Number of Applicants by Grade Statistics

Result

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:

Registered over 840 doctors to the medical staff bank, including 160 bank-only doctors and 70% of the substantive workforce.
Confirmed 20,759 shifts with an exceptional average fill rate of 97%.
Processed 12,596 timesheets, the majority on a weekly pay arrangement.
Delivered a cost reduction in excess of £2 million (net) for the Trust.
Achieved 138% of agreed workforce saving targets.
Developed a mobile app, facilitating the real-time booking of shifts and electronic timesheets.

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.

Best Consultancy Partnership with the NHS Finalist

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