One workforce and the success of ICSs

Bringing together healthcare services within an area to the betterment of patient care is the central aim of integrated care systems (ICSs). We’ve explored how technology can support interoperability of services in a previous blog. Here, we’re taking a closer look at the one workforce idea and how it can be implemented and support patient care across an ICS. The workforce, after all, is the frontline of patient care, so ensuring that everyone is scheduled appropriately and efficiently, is competent for the jobs to which they are being assigned, have ongoing training opportunities and that recruitment is working to strengthen the areas that need strengthening, is vital.

Bringing all this understanding together in one place requires the interoperability of systems that we’ve explored previously. Data and information sharing between different facets of the ICS is crucial to meeting so many aspects laid out by ICSs, including the one workforce ideology. It’s impossible to envisage everyone using the same technology system, so the ability for systems to interact with one another, or share data into a central repository, will be essential in understanding the workforce across an entire ICS.

Right people, right place, right time

Shift work is commonplace in the health industry. Effectively rostering people within applicable regulatory guidelines is one part. Understanding shift patterns, who will be where and when, opens opportunities to create insights into work patterns and more effectively deploying staff across an ICS.

For example, the agency versus bank staff debate is never far from the surface, with the added expenditure but increased flexibility of agency staff being utilised to fill gaps. Is there a more efficient way of rostering bank staff to available tasks? Creating insight that drives efficiency in this way will help to reduce expenditure.

Technology will play a fundamental role in this via auto-scheduling and suggestions based upon staff profiles. Auto-scheduling reduces administrative time on assigning staff to tasks, creating efficiency and freeing up administrative time to focus on other areas.

With the aim of sharing staff to fill in short falls elsewhere in an ICS, technology will have to be implemented to support this, otherwise it will be almost impossible to achieve. Checking available resources across an ICS can be done manually, or via spreadsheets, but requires significant resourcing in terms of personnel and time. Implementing effective scheduling software, that supports the aims of the ICS, will be crucial.

Training and integration

Of course, agency staff will always have a role to play, and their integration into their department is crucial to them being effective. Clear management of them and their roles will ensure that they achieve the results required of them.

This also plays into bank staff. What training opportunities are available to them? Career progression within the healthcare industry is outlined in the implementation of ICSs, so understanding the skills, experience and qualifications of staff will help in suggesting training opportunities to them that can help them evolve an advance their careers.

Having a central record of staff, running parallel to scheduling, creates these insights into your workforce. Upskilling from within is often more cost effective and more efficient than recruiting from outside. It also helps to keep your workforce upwardly mobile and motivated.

Operating training courses, too, goes beyond upskilling and retraining to ensuring that mandatory ongoing courses are undertaken by staff where appropriate.

Competency management

This plays into the competency management efforts across an ICS. Whilst similar to training and workforce management, competency management is a specific function which ensures aspects such as mandatory training courses are delivered. It also helps to ensure that appropriately skilled, experienced and qualified staff are undertaking specific tasks.

This is relevant to the deployment of agency staff, too. Do they have the necessary skills to carry out the tasks that you need them to? Against the idea of pooling resources across an ICS, competency management will play an important role in matching skills to vacant tasks.

It is all part of creating a thorough and robust understanding of the workforce across an ICS, which will help create flexibility and efficiency.

Recruitment

Another aspect of the one workforce philosophy is the creation of a pipeline for the future workforce. Recruitment is central to this, with one aim being working more closely with local schools, colleges and universities to engage with young people who might be interested in a career in healthcare.

By creating relationships in this way, ICSs can promote careers within them. Also, there is always a need for ongoing recruitment into senior roles. By having a holistic view of the workforce, understanding recruitment needs is made easier via identifying skills, experience and availability issues. Where these gaps cannot be plugged by sharing staffing resources, outside recruitment is inevitable.

Is this more efficient than relying on agency staff? What are the timescales? What training will new recruits require? How much management time will be diverted to the recruitment process?

By having a bird’s eye view of your entire workforce, making calculated decisions is easier. This then helps to understand and justify the decision to recruit or use agency staff.

Conclusion

Technology will play a central role in implementing the one workforce philosophy. Having oversight of the entire workforce, in one place, from disparate systems will facilitate the traversing of schedules, availability, skills and experience required to drive efficiency. Creating robust rules and auto-scheduling will improve administrative efficiency; having training and competency management processes in place will help with staff retention and progression.

None of this is possible with a manual way of working. If schedules are managed on spreadsheets, it’s impossible to effectively share them with the wider ICS. Gaining valuable and purposeful insights that can help drive efficiency are also incredibly difficult to achieve in a manual way.

Using the technology that works for you is important. Then making the data that you hold useful across an ICS will help to fulfil the aims of the ICS. Can your technology provider(s) do that?

With comprehensive oversight of staff, their skills and experiences, the one workforce aims of the ICS can be met. It’s one thing focussing on improving outcomes for patients, but improving outcomes for staff is just as important, since they will be the ones driving services and care.

We explore the relationship between ICSs and technology comprehensively in our recent white paper. You can download your free copy here.