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Liz Slater,
Rostering System Administrator
University Hospitals of Leicester
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Enhancing
patient care through better utilisation of resources is a
key objective in healthcare provision. However, managing a
wide range of skills and competencies, requirements and
demands is an onerous task. To have the right skills
available in the right place at the right time, to budget
and to an agreed care standard, while ensuring fairness in
dealing with staff requests can take hours without the aid
of technology.
SMI has
worked with healthcare organisations since 1989 and has
developed Staff.Care to ease the burden involved in this
process. Staff.Care automates the manual processes involved
in the compilation of the rota while allowing skilled staff
to use their judgement and knowledge to fine tune the
suggested plan. It greatly reduces the time taken to produce
the rota as it takes all of the elements of demand and
availability into consideration and automatically produces
an optimised solution for review by management.
Staff.Care
maintains details of contract, bank and agency staff
combined with available staff at the appropriate grade. When
deciding whether a staff member should work a particular
shift, their past and future working patterns, as well as
current requests are considered. Based on all the available
information Staff.Care creates the rota automatically; more
accurately, quickly and fairly.
The budget for
the shift, day, rota period and year are maintained in
Staff.Care and are taken into account when the rota is
produced. It also keeps track of staff member’s hours owed
and owing which are then carried over into the next rota
period as appropriate.