Staff Benchmarking

1
Staff Benchmarking

• Does this add value and should we pursue this
  more widely?
• Francis Thompson
• West London Mental Health Trust

2
National context

• NHS Constitution, NHS Act and one of the six
  essential CQC standards place a duty on Trusts to
  ensure that staffing levels are adequate
• Francis (no not me)
• Prime Ministers commission
• The Centre for Social Justice (2011) argue that
  all acute inpatient wards should be seen as
  specialist areas and staffed accordingly
• Increasing acuity (HTT)
• The Royal College of Nursing (2007) survey RMNs
  showed that two thirds deemed inpatient staffing
  to be too low and 42 felt that staffing levels
  compromised patient care at least once per week.

3
Local Context

• - Lack of easily identifiable information at a
  Trust level and concerns re acute unit staffing
• - Concerns re differences in staffing between
  units
• - CQC concerns
• - Lack of clarity regarding safe staffing levels
  and lack of a recognised way to measure staffing
  needs
• - Context of financial savings.

4
What we did and some caveats
Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove
anything. 14 of people know that.
5
Trust data
6
Staffing data admission and recovery wards
7
Local comparisons recovery wards
8
Points to note

• Disparities noted between wards inside Trusts in
  both the areas I have carried out this work
• Particular differences noted in availability of
  9-5 staff
• Need to include other available resources for a
  robust comparison e.g. OT resource etc and this
  is not easy to gather
• It did enable a high level discussion on staffing
  and noted some other local interesting points..

9
Potential benefits

• Provides some assurance regarding staffing levels
  locally and compared to other Trusts
• Good intelligence to support workforce planning
• Lever to raise quality issues and argue for
  budget protection/enhancement
• May improve patient care/experience if numbers
  felt to be below par
• Raises unit staffing to board level
• Opportune time given national drivers.

10
Risks

• Biggest risk - no benchmark to measure against
  what if we are all too high or low??
• May be inadvertently be used as quality measure
• Crude - difficult to compare units in different
  contexts and areas
• If not done carefully may isolate nursing numbers
  from other MDT input
• Complexity of data collection and peripherals
  such as bleep holders
• Data may be felt to be sensitive by Trusts
• Financial implications of having comparatively
  lower staffing
• Can the numbers influence change?
• Constant flux and change this will only ever be
  a snapshot.

11
Points for discussion

• Given the risk, benefits and complexity is this
  worth pursuing?
• If so is this better done locally or more
  broadly?
• What could be done with the outcomes? Would this
  lead to rigidity?
• If this is pursued it would only be a snapshot
  and timeframes and shared data tool would need to
  be developed.

12

• Any more thoughts, comments or questions?
• Any more?