A collaboration of 14 London NHS hospitals have begun to use a centralised online staffing platform to fill urgent clinical vacancies on the COVID-19 frontline. The roll-out is a landmark in inter-Trust cooperation as well as in public-private health sector collaboration.
The London COVID-19 Digital Staff Bank – an online pool of thousands of NHS workers – which has been created by a group of NHS Trusts and is managed by Patchwork Health and Reed Talent Solutions – has been designed to ensure London NHS Trusts can access the healthcare workers they need in order to ensure wards are safely staffed.
Some London hospitals are seeing up to 20% of their staff absent owing to sickness or self-isolation, with others staying away to protect vulnerable family members. The need to pool resources and enable enhanced workforce flexibility has never been greater.
London hospitals will now use the cloud-based London COVID-19 Digital Staff Bank to broadcast their urgent shift vacancies to a wider pool of trained clinicians. Some of the UK’s largest Trusts including Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London North West University Trust and Hillingdon Hospital – collectively caring for over 4 million people each year – are all currently being onboarded, with more Trusts to be announced shortly.
Deputy Director of People and Organisational Development at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, Dawn Sullivan, comments: “We are in the midst of an unprecedented challenge across the NHS. Coming together to pool resources and share access to clinical expertise will help each Trust react more effectively to current and upcoming challenges. By working together, and using technology to make it happen, we can support our incredible healthcare workers in getting to where patients need them most.”
Thanks to a secure credential-sharing system, NHS staff who sign up to the COVID-19 Digital Bank will be able to immediately work at any of the participating hospital Trusts without the need for any further verification. This will save thousands of hours of administrative time and thousands of pounds in related costs, rapidly speeding up redeployment of staff in line with shifting COVID-19 needs.
Dr Anas Nader, CEO of Patchwork Health, says: “We’ve been working tirelessly to get the London Digital Staff Bank up and running. We are currently seeing over 1,000 new COVID-19 vacancies go live each week on our platform, highlighting just how acute the need is across the NHS. We hope this Digital COVID-19 Bank will go some way towards relieving these pressures and ensuring we can rapidly redeploy staff to where they are needed most.
“We will be supporting London NHS hospitals to ensure safe staffing levels at all times, and we will be helping doctors and nurses get to work in the places where they are needed most, to fight the battle against COVID-19.”