How one NHS Trust used Optima to manage daily staffing levels during the pandemic

Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust

Summary

Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust employs approximately 4,200 staff. Operating from the Tameside General Hospital site and other community locations across Tameside and Glossop, the organisation serves a population of around 250,000 people. The Trust successfully used Optima throughout the first wave of the pandemic to manage staffing levels. By working closely with RLDatix, the Trust developed a short-term work around to ensure roster data was automatically refreshed and fed into Covid-19 Situation Reports for NHSI requirements.

Monitoring staffing levels during the pandemic

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, each department within the Trust was responsible for managing its own staff. However, there was no system in place to monitor staffing levels and staffing needs.

In many instances, this was done by transferring data from Optima on to a paper template, often resulting in data that was quickly out of date. For example, the medicine team employed an administrator who was solely responsible for updating staffing numbers and movements between 7am and 3pm, which left room for error during non-working hours.

Rise in demand for care led to need for trust-wide view of staffing levels

As the demand for care increased and more people were admitted with Covid-19, senior management at the Trust requested a trust wide view of nursing levels.

The Trust had more than 2,500 staff rostered on the system and approximately 995 nursing staff over 26 wards – all of which had to be monitored daily. The senior team needed to establish absences, particularly in relation to Covid-19 for the NHSI return, and also wanted to know where staff were available so that they could be redeployed if necessary.