Building a Rostering Community Across a System: The Hampshire & Isle of Wight Journey
Most rostering improvement happens within individual trusts. Hampshire and Isle of Wight did something different. They brought their trusts together as an ICB to build rostering capability collectively, share learning, align systems and track improvement at a system level. In this session from the Connected Health & Care Summit 2026, Angela Murphy from the Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICB and Tom Weeks from Portsmouth Hospitals and Isle of Wight NHS Trust share the full journey, from financial recovery origins through to aligning two Optima databases that were five versions apart and rolling out medics rostering across 1,800 doctors.
Watch how Hampshire and Isle of Wight built a rostering community of practice across four trusts, aligned databases, reduced unfilled duties by 50% and rolled out medics rostering, with honest lessons on patience, noise and making change that is better for most.
What the programme achieved and the key numbers
This session covers a two-year system-level rostering improvement programme and the merger of two rostering teams at Portsmouth and Isle of Wight. The headline outcomes were:
- All four trusts now tracked on a single-page monthly system overview across 12 metrics, with four prioritised for improvement
- Each organisation improved on unavailability and headroom, though none has yet hit their target
- At Portsmouth and Isle of Wight, unfilled duties reduced by 50% and net hours balance reduced, maintained for six months
- 51 wards went live for team-based rostering in 12 months
- SafeCare reached 90% compliance at both organisations
- 680 of 900 resident doctors now have populated rosters, with full coverage targeted for March 2027
- 200 obsolete rosters closed, 100 new rosters built, 2,000 inactive agency workers removed from the system
