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Bedford Hospital has selected Zircadian’s e Roster solution to manage junior doctors hours more efficiently and reduce locum spend significantly. Implementation of Zircadian’s online system, has been a significant factor in helping to drive down the locum spend on junior doctors. Bedford Hospital NHS Trust has reduced its locum spend by 44% saving £220,000 in the first four months after implementation and seeing a return on investment within the first month. The Trust is on target to save £660,000 within the first year of implementing the Zircadian’s e-Roster solution.

 

Medical Director at the Trust, Ed Neale commented, “Using Zircadian’s software it is easy to see where and when people are working, and the fact that we have been able to demonstrate such large savings so swiftly has proven that the system was well worth investing in. The system is easy to use and provides quick and robust solutions to the day to day management of increasingly complex rosters designed to meet both clinical needs and the European Working Time Directive”

 

Before implementing e-Roster Bedford Hospital relied on nine different staff members spread across the Trust’s multiple clinical specialties to create rosters for their junior doctors. This was carried out using Excel spreadsheets which were updated monthly or even six-monthly and were visible only to selected members of staff. As a result information on rosters was rarely up-to-date often leaving an inaccurate and incomplete picture of junior doctors’ schedules. This meant that the Trust found it difficult to respond quickly to situations when extra support was needed or it would spend money on locum doctors without being able to properly investigate alternatives first.

 

The severity of the problem was identified when the Trust reported an average junior doctor locum spend of over £125,000 per month between April-October 2010. Reducing this spend was a priority, and to do this the Trust was clear that it needed to replace its existing rostering systems with a more robust and efficient form of workforce management.

 

Bedford Hospital turned to Zircadian, a leading provider of software and consultancy for all hospital doctors in the NHS after seeing a demonstration of the company’s e-Roster product, which is designed specifically for junior doctors. The Trust was already using two solutions, e-Rota and e-Monitor, from Zircadian’s Junior Doctor Portal. By choosing to expand its current complement of solutions from the portal to include e-Roster, the Trust aimed to improve its processes and as a consequence, significantly reduce its locum spend.

 

Zircadian’s e-Roster is designed specifically to manage the complex working patterns of junior doctors. The system has completely transformed the way in which Bedford’s junior doctor rosters are managed. All rosters for Bedford Hospital’s junior doctors are now built automatically from agreed templates and held centrally by the e-Roster system.

 

Once rosters are created, roster managers can easily make adjustments at any time to account for shift swaps, holidays and sick leave, using e-Roster to identify where swaps and leave can take place without affecting services. The system gives an accurate picture of unfilled shifts and available staff across all departments, meaning the Trust can now identify gaps at a glance. If the system can’t highlight available staff to swap into the shift, internal locums can be quickly identified using the system’s ‘locum search’ tool. The system also allows doctors to be more pro-active should they wish to work additional hours.

 

With e-Roster, consultants and switchboard staff always have an up-to-date record of exactly which junior doctors should be where and when, and who will be holding the on-call bleep for emergencies. These are all important factors contributing to improvements in patient safety.

 

Dr. Henry Carleton, Managing Director at Zircadian commented, “NHS Trusts are all faced with the challenge of reducing costs while maintaining patient care. As Bedford Hospital NHS Trust has demonstrated, e-Roster improves the use of existing resources, which in turn can provide an extremely rapid return on investment. In this case the cost of the system was easily recouped within one month, and the Trust is on track to save more than half a million pounds in just one year.”

 

See full case study here

 

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