We're excited to be starting a project to procure an electronic rostering and case management system in the community care group that will in turn benefit our staff and patients alike. North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust is one of 38 NHS Trusts to receive funding to improve its e-rostering systems.

Salli Pilcher, Associate Director of Nursing, at North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust said:

“This is an absolute game changer for community nursing and how we manage and allocate our most valuable resource - our staff time and competencies -  to ensure we can provide responsive, high quality, safe care.

 “It brings e-rostering to the community providing our staff with technology that other industries take for granted.  It will also enable us to use technology on the go when we’re out there in our rural areas and at the point of care. It will enable us to shape and develop our workforce to ensure we have safe staffing levels in the community with the right skills at the right time to meet the needs of our patients."

E-rostering can save time and effort when redeploying staff, digitally matching staff skillset with patient care requirements and geography, while managing working hours and pay to save clinicians time and effort every week.

Emma Kirkman, Safer Nurse Staffing Lead at North Cumbria Integrated NHS Foundation Trust, adds:

“The community nursing teams are often to referred to as wards without walls, there are no fixed numbers of beds and yet the service must flex to meet the fluctuating demands of the patient caseload, as such it has been difficult to have an overview of capacity and demand to meet the needs of the service to provide highly quality and sustainable nursing care.

“This funding will bring new opportunities to us in a more flexible approach and it will support us to be able to have an oversight of the staffing situation.”

Anna Stabler, Executive Chief Nurse at North Cumbria Integrated NHS Foundation Trust said:

“We’re delighted to have been awarded this funding to help us develop a community workforce deployment system for our nurses and Allied Health Care Professionals working in the community. The funding will be utilised to deliver electronic rostering and case management systems that will in turn benefit our staff and patients alike. It will mean our staff can support patients in a more timely manner, whilst reducing their travel time and improve their working arrangements. We’re very much looking forward to getting this piece of work underway.”

The investment is part of a £26 million national fund to have all NHS doctors, nurses and other clinical staff on e-rostering systems by 2021, shown to be particularly invaluable during the pandemic. North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust is being awarded £618,000 share of the funding.

Find out more info at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/75-million-to-digitally-schedule-shifts-and-save-nhs-staff-time