Allocate has announced the winners of the Allocate Awards 2017 at an awards ceremony held at glittering award ceremony attended by over 150 NHS trusts. The seven winning hospitals and six highly-commended trusts all demonstrated significant improvements such as: improved patient experience and safety, better staff engagement, reduced agency spend and better bed management were just some of the areas where there was strong evidence of improvement.
The 2017 award for Flexibility went to Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust. The trust was able to demonstrate how it monitors patient acuity and dependency, staffing levels and skill mix to redeploy staff on every shift. Bank staff now undergo an effective appraisal system and assessed to ensure they are competent in skills for the roles they are taking on.
At East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust, winner of the Care Needs First award, an in-house enhanced nursing care team (ENCT) has helped to improve patient safety, reduce agency spend and an increase in standards of care for high-risk patients.
Whole Workforce award winner Dudley and Walsall Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust now has better oversight of all bank staff, unsocial hours, overtime and absences thanks to the introduction of e-Rostering. Agency usage as a percentage of all temporary staffing dropped from over 26 per cent to 8.6 per cent from March to September 2017.
Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust picked up the award for Workforce Intelligence. The medical rostering team at Epsom and St Helier introduced a new way to record and process all payments for additional sessions. These include additional clinics or theatre lists to support waiting lists, beyond individual job plans and department service plans. To date, there have been considerable cost savings. Information captured and reviewed in HealthRoster has enabled the trust to move additional sessions into weekday day time.
The 2017 award for Collaboration went to Norfolk Community Health and Care NHS Trust which is reaping the benefits of a whole-systems approach to bed management and patient flow thanks to the successful implementation of Allocate’s SafeCare. The trust has realised numerous benefits, including improved bed management and utilisation, increased staff availability through better staff management, absence reporting and planning.
North East London NHS Foundation Trust was the winner of the Leadership award. The trust managed to achieve its objective of a £10 million reduction in agency spend by 31 March 2017. A working group began monitoring compliance with price caps and off-framework agreements, its use of contracted hours, return to work processes and eight-week rostering. The team pinpointed leadership as one of the key elements that contributed to the success of this change management programme.
The Evolving Care Settings award went to Whittington Health NHS Trust. The trust was able to demonstrate that it has improved the operational deployment of staff in community and social care. Patients know which member of staff is turning up and when, travel time for the nurses has been significantly reduced, plans consider patient needs and employee skills. When plans change on the day, everyone is aware and visits are easily re-planned.
If you would like to find out more about the winning entries and how they were able to show evidence of improvement to our independent panel of judges, you can download a copy of the awards nights brochure here.
