Case studies

Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust was created in 2002 to provide mental health and learning disability services to nearly one million people living in the area of Leicestershire and Rutland. It also offers specialist services to people living beyond these areas.

 

One of Leicestershire Partnership’s main challenges in meeting the NHS QIPP (Quality, Innovation, Productivity & Prevention) agenda is to manage the complexities of planning rotas for its medical workforce. This is essential to meet the needs of its patient services and comply with legislation in a financially responsible manner. The Trust has for some time used Zircadian’s e-Rota web-based rota management software to create junior doctor rotas that are compliant with both the New Deal and European Working Time Directive (EWTD). In addition, the trust has been using the e-Monitor module to monitor doctors’ hours and ensure compliance is maintained and financial penalties are prevented.

 

Building on the success of e-Rota and e-Monitor, the Trust recently implemented e-Roster, an innovative module from Zircadian’s Junior Doctor Portal. e-Roster takes the contractual rota and creates online rosters that have improved the way in which junior doctors rosters are managed while still handling the complexities of junior doctor working patterns. The Trust reaping the benefits of using Zircadian’s integrated solutions to manage medical staff across five clinical units

 

Angela Salmen, Senior Medical Staffing Manager at Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust immediately saw the potential of the e-roster system, including its integration with the Trust’s existing rota planning system, e-Rota. She explains the reason for selecting Zircadian’s e-Roster over other rostering solutions:

 

“We have been using Zircadian’s e-Rota for some time now and have found it invaluable for managing our rotas to comply with legislation. We save a lot of time when we are planning rotas and the tool gives us the flexibility to try different scenarios and look at the consequences of ward or service changes."

 

"However, we were still preparing our rosters for junior doctors in paper format, which was becoming difficult to manage. A paper copy was held at the switchboard to ensure they had a record of who was on duty, but as changes are often made to the rosters, the rosters quickly became out-of-date. The process of making swaps to the rotas was very time-consuming, cumbersome and subject to errors.”

 

"Zircadian’s e-Roster helps us to manage rosters for our junior doctors. It helps us to ensure continuous compliance, manage swaps and record study or annual leave . We will always have an accurate record of the on call duties for junior doctors.”

 

For Angela and her team a particularly useful feature is the flagging up of gaps in service, where locum cover might be required. She says, “We can now see clearly when we have a gap in the roster that may require locum cover. This enables us to take a proactive approach to filling the gap and maintaining medical cover.” As well as the medical staffing team managing the gaps, junior doctors can now log into the secure portal and see which duties they can apply to do as locum shifts.

 

The next phase for the medical staffing team in realising the full benefits of e-Roster is to roll it out to reception staff so that they always have the most up-to-date record of which doctors are on duty at any time.

 

Zircadian Director Dr Masood Ahmed commented, “NHS Trusts have a very specific challenge: meeting their priorities to deliver the best possible patient care and providing training while managing resources efficiently. With complex legislation for junior doctors’ hours, shift patterns, annual leave and sickness, paper-based methods just do not provide the flexibility or accuracy to be sufficient management tools. Zircadian’s e-Roster has completely changed the way in which junior doctors' rosters are managed. We now have an up-to-date, transparent system that can identify what every doctor in the Trust is doing, who is on call, and who are the locums. The online facility means that roster managers and doctors alike can check their rosters from the comfort on their own home. Harnessing the latest proven technologies to deliver this kind of flexible and innovative solution will help the NHS meet the QIPP challenge: increased productivity, reduced cost and ensuring better patient care.”

 

See this case study on the NHS Employers website

 

For further information contact Dee Enright on 020 8946 8199 or email dee.enright@zircadian.com