04.08.15
Cornwall delivers £400,000 agency staff underspend
Cornwall Partnership NHS FT has been able to deliver more than a £400,000 underspend on agency staffing costs in the last year with a “renewed focus on recruitment and roles”.
An NHE FoI investigation to all the trusts who sent copies of their draft accounts to Monitor and the NHS TDA revealed that out of 176 respondents, only three trusts had delivered underspends: Manchester Mental Health & Social Care Trust; Cornwall Partnership NHS FT; and South Essex Partnership University NHS FT
As the principal provider of mental health, children's and learning disability services to people in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, the FT had originally forecast to spend £1.3m on agency in 2014-15 but instead spent just over £909,000.
This represented only 1.52% of the FT’s £60m staffing budget, which is significantly lower than many other trusts. During the course of our investigation it was revealed that nearly 20% of trusts spent more than a tenth of their entire staffing budget on agency.
Speaking to NHE about the work done at Cornwall, the trust’s executive nurse, Sharon Linter, said: “Our success in managing our use of agency staff and the amount we spend in this area is attributable to our renewed focus on recruitment and roles.
“To achieve this, we reviewed job descriptions, looked at the way roles are structured and targeted our recruitment campaigns accordingly. For example, we have increased the numbers of preceptor roles for newly qualified nurses to attract fresh talent into the trust.
She added this not only brought about new ideas but allowed newly qualified staff to benefit from the experience of long-serving staff.
“We have further developed our own staff ‘bank’, recruiting people who want to work flexibly within their local community,” said Linter. “This ensures we have a group of trained staff who are familiar with our wards and facilities who cover shifts at short-notice.
NHE’s full FoI investigation into agency spend will appear in the July/August edition of the magazine.