Background
Mersey Care NHS Trust, Wirral Community NHS Trust and Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHST Trust are all located in the same ICB and were keen to look at how to work more collaboratively together to manage their temporary staffing spend and reduce reliance on agency workers. Each Trust had differing solutions in place with differing contract end date, but all Trusts shared the common goal of looking at one provider to manage the agency supply chain and direct engagement provisions for all trusts.
Challenge
All 3 Trusts had differing providers for their temporary staffing solutions, meaning no common approach or complete visibility of spend or trends across the collaborative. The Trusts had pockets of workers that were off framework and also non adherence with the NHSI capped rate cards. All 3 Trusts had fill rates circa 75% and wanted to look at ways to expand their supply chain, increase fill rates, but without the added workload on their internal teams. The 3 Trusts decided to go to market for a Neutral Vendor and Direct Engagement provision to cover all staffing groups.
Key aims
- To have a common provider and approach across all 3 Trusts
- To implement a Neutral Vendor and Direct Engagement arrangement
- To improve the fill rates across the 3 Trusts
- To reduce agency spend and achieve NHSI capped rate compliance
- To improve information sharing and governance that allows the collaborative to review their positions and look at common initiatives to manage and reduce agency spend
- To align the suppliers working with each Trust
- To streamline processes for Temporary staffing teams and finance by introducing efficiencies
Solution
The collaborative awarded Agile Workforce as its Neutral Vendor and Direct Engagement in January 2024. This was a staggered implementation with the final Trust going live on 8th April 2024. The contract was successfully implemented with no disruption to service and fill rates maintained.
Achievements - 1 years of contract
The collaborative has now reached it's 1st anniversary and ha achieved so much by partnering with Agile Workforce Services.
Agile has dedicated Client Managers that run arrangements on behalf of the Trusts, who have streamlined processes both for sourcing candidates and invoicing. This has significantly reduced the workload associated with temporary staffing for all Trusts with them now having no contact with the supply chain agencies at all.
Agile's team have managed the transition of off framework workers to on-framework agencies without any of the Trusts incurring transfer fees or disruption to their services.
As of 1st April 2025 all Agenda for Change staff are now booked at all 3 Trusts at the NHSI capped rate card, meaning that the Trusts now only have breaches for their Medical Locums.
The collaborative now achieves fill rates consistently in excess of 90% and the Trusts have managed to reduce their demand for agency workers by approx. 50% from this time last year.
The Trusts now have access to comprehensive management information which allows them to benchmark rates, review fill rates and suppliers, and monitor demand. Agile attends individual review meetings at each Trust as well as monthly collaborative review meetings alongside the NOE CPC framework.
Agile have dedicated project leads who bring suggestions on improvements and initiatives to ensure that the contract is continuously improving and looking to capitalise on all opportunities to make savings and reduce demand.
Results to date
- 496,532 hours booked by Agile in last 12 months
- 53,495 shifts booked by Agile in last 12 months
- Average collaborative fill rate 94.2% since the go live
- Total VAT savings of £842,050 in the last 12 months
- Removal of all off framework spend from all 3 Trusts
- All Agenda for Change staff now booked at NHSI capped rate card
- All Trusts now receiving comprehensive management information to support with spend and trend analysis
- Compliance now managed and assured by Agile
- Quarterly collaborative meetings now commenced to review collaborative MI and agree initiatives.