Developing a collaborative bank at Lead Employer Trust and HEE

Liaison has been working with trusts in the North East and North Cumbria to develop Flexishift - a collaborative locum bank to share doctors across the region, reduce reliance on agency locum workers and benefit from reduced rate cost savings.

Liaison has been working with trusts in the North East and North Cumbria to develop Flexishift – a collaborative locum bank to share doctors across the region, reduce reliance on agency locum workers and benefit from reduced rate cost savings.

Scope and findings

Some eight trusts now form part of the ‘Flexishift’ collaborative bank in the North East and North Cumbria supported by Liaison’s TempRE service.

The success of the collaborative bank has been in the delivery of the ‘concept’. Liaison Workforce spoke with trusts to dispel some of the ‘myths’ around readiness to join a collaborative bank and the benefits of joining a TempRE bank. These included:

Trusts do not need to be using the same agency platform to join.

No need to agree regional rates before creating a collaborative bank.

Liaison’s pilot involved:

Driving Productivity, Innovation and Compliance

Education and Training

Provided training to system users and also to all the trusts who formed part of the pilot. Some trusts chose to upload the shifts directly onto the system whilst others used Liaison Workforce to do this task for them.

Technology and Support

Joint processes, technology and governance, saving costs to reinvest in care.

Reduced Agency Reliance

Reduction in reliance on agencies, and more familiarity in temporary staff leading to improved staff experience resulting in higher morale and retention.

Workforce Planning

Greater use of rostering data and analysis to know ‘who works where’, Increased pool of staff and specialisms to meet demand across sites and bargain with suppliers.

Patient Outcomes

Quality improvement and patient safety.

Payroll Support

Doctors working through Flexishift paid weekly for shifts worked, run by Northumbria Healthcare Foundation Trust.

Achievements to date

December 2017

Started a six-month pilot with five trusts.

These were:

County Durham & Darlington NHS Trust.
Gateshead Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
Northumbria Healthcare NHS
Foundation Trust.
North Tees & Hartlepool NHS
Foundation Trust.
South Tees NHS Foundation Trust.
May 2019: Newcastle upon Tyne
Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust goes
live – piloting the collaborative bank
The Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals
NHS Foundation Trust joins the bank.

Three months into the pilot and 344 doctors registered on the bank.

August 2018

Mobile TempRE App went live allowing doctors to book shifts on the go.

September 2018

570 doctors registered on the bank across 34 specialties. An additional mental health trust and another acute trust join the bank.

We’ve been successful in securing regional collaboration, not only in terms of addressing and harmonising pay rates, but also in improving the patient safety side. With some fifty percent of the doctors rotating around the region, we’re now using a workforce that is aware of how we operate within the region and the systems at the individual hospital trust sites. The collaborative bank ensures that we have doctors and dentists working at the level, specialty and competence that they have been trained to do within the NHS.

Linsey Richards

Head of Human Resources, Lead Employer Trust, Health Education England North East.