Barts Health NHS Trust, England’s largest NHS Trust with over 15,000 staff, is moving to a new electronic workforce system which will make it easier than ever before to ensure wards are staffed safely and with the appropriate skill mix.
The formation of Barts Health in 2012 saw the merger of six hospitals with a variety of tracking and rostering tools. Having conducted a lengthy selection exercise, the Trust is now working in partnership with Allocate Software to implement one Trust-wide system.
Using Allocate Software’s HealthSuite software, including its HealthRoster and HealthMedics solutions, Barts Health aims to replace existing paper records and spreadsheets to rota all staff groups including nurses and medics. The new system will also help to reduce expenditure and reliance on Bank and Agency staff, helping the Trust to meet its commitment to employ 95 per cent permanent staff.
Human Resources Director at Barts Health NHS Trust, Michael Pantlin said: “The trust believes its employees, our staff, are our most valuable resource. By integrating how we manage staff and patient numbers across our hospitals we will have greater visibility and control of our staff groups, ensuring we have the right staff to care for patients in the right place and at the right time.
“The online software will also give teams instant access to real-time staffing levels, patient numbers and the acuity and care needs of these patients, as well as schedules of clinical activity such as clinics and theatres.”
Allocate Software’s HealthRoster suite will help the trust in a number of ways, including:
- providing a single system that will help managers match demand to clinical need which ensures the right staff are available at the right time, managing absence and informing payroll;
- providing visibility and control of nurse staffing levels in relation to patient acuity and dependency as well as overall patient numbers;
- delivering a system for managing consultant job planning, medical availability, junior doctor rotas and clinical activity management which can then be integrated into other rosters for multi-disciplinary service environments;
- streamlining interaction with temporary staffing/agency services which will then use the system to manage booking of bank and agency staff as well as timesheet/payroll collation;
- empowering staff by providing online access to relevant documents (such as their annual leave calendar and request duty forms) so they can manage their responsibilities more effectively.
- assisting with the full visibility of staff utilization and absence management.
Allocate Software’s HealthSuite will play a significant part in helping the Trust continue to meet the challenge of delivering safe, high quality care while ensuring staff have access to a system which will help them in their day-to-day roles.
Ian Bowles, chief executive, Allocate Software, said: “It is important that an NHS Trust of this size is able to manage staff effectively and in real-time. HealthRoster will ensure the Trust can have a high level view of what is happening in every ward, theatre and clinic and department whilst at the same time allowing managers to drill down team by team to individual staff. We are very excited about the opportunity to help Barts Health gain this level of insight and understanding.”
Notes to editors:
Allocate Software brings in-depth market knowledge and wide-ranging expertise to the development of innovative solutions that are designed to help the NHS become more efficient while maintaining and improving service quality. Our solutions are the most widely-used workforce management, governance and compliance tools in healthcare. HealthSuite solutions include e-Rostering with HealthRoster, medic workforce solutions with HealthMedics, risk and compliance with HealthAssure and PatientFlow and Emergency Department solutions with RealTime.
For further information about Allocate Software please contact:
Liz Jones [email protected] or 07968 412642 Julian Tyndale-Biscoe, [email protected], or 07882 985507
