We have looked at some of the steps which medical directors could take to help reduce their Trusts spend on medical locums. It includes a list against which you can check your Trust is taking effective action and advice on where to start if you have yet to tackle your Trust’s over-reliance on medical locums. It sanitises the experience of Trusts that have substantially cut their spend on medical locums.
Trusts should only use locums as a last resort to fill short-term staffing gaps after other options have been exhausted, this is because:
Locums are an expensive solution to staffing shortages; the 2015/16 bill for medical locums in the NHS in England was £1.3 billion, representing over a third of agency spend, or £51 per taxpayer
Their overuse can put care quality at risk; a stable workforce whose members have regular appraisals is most likely to deliver high quality care and achieve continuity of services.
- Medical directors take greater control of workforce deployment, locum use and spending through the introduction of medical workforce software
- Collect timely and accurate data with bespoke reports
- Develop alternatives to using locums by introducing MedicOnDuty
- Introduce formal process for requesting locums with MedicOnline
- Reduce future reliance on locums with ActivityManager
Maintaining a stable medical workforce is challenging: doctors are highly mobile and many specialties and parts of the country face a shortage of trained medical staff. National action is being taken to tackle these shortages, but every Trust needs to take steps now to wean itself from an over-reliance on medical locums filling short-term and long-term gaps. Better deployment of medical workforce software is key.
