Staff Wellbeing

Improving NHS staff wellbeing

At a challenging time for the sector, Debra Gers, employment lawyer at Blake Morgan, and Jordan Cummins, health director at the CBI discuss what can be done to improve the wellbeing of staff working in health and social care

There’s no question that the last few years have led to unprecedented pressure on the health and social care sector, with the Covid-19 pandemic and its residual effects, and now the cost-ofliving crisis creating fresh challenges.

One area which has been adversely affected is the physical and mental wellbeing of those working in the NHS and wider health and social care organisations. The backlog of appointments, on-going demand for services, and staff shortages has added extra pressure to an already squeezed workforce, which has had little to no respite following an intense few years.

Mental Health

Many are suffering from unprecedented levels of poor mental health, including stress, anxiety, depression and PTSD, and organisations are experiencing higher volumes of sickness absence. With the cost-of-living crisis deepening, financial concerns are also rising. Improving the wellbeing of those working within the sector has never been more important. The health and social care sector must put this at the centre of its value proposition and work to improve job design and satisfaction to protect the workforce from ongoing challenges. The NHS has a strategy for improving the wellbeing of its staff, and is investing in initiatives including supporting the new Integrated

Care Systems to develop and pilot locallyowned health and wellbeing offers for their workforce. Other organisations and businesses across the sector need One area which has been adversely affected is the physical and mental wellbeing of those working in the NHS to follow suit and make proactive investment in the wellbeing of workers. How can staff wellbeing be improved in practice? Long working hours and high workload has been a challenge in the sector for many years, leading to burnout for staff. Reducing these this is an obvious first step. While a longer-term approach is needed to combat the strain on resources, there are structural changes which can be implemented now to ease pressures on individual staff members. These include creating better shift patterns to give employees greater flexibility, ensuring better training, and putting E

 in place initiatives such as shared workloads to ensure those on the frontline do not feel unnecessary burdens.

Organisations should also prioritise mid-level management, putting more people in these positions and giving them the training needed to ease the pressure on more junior workers.

For employees who are experiencing poor mental health, creating a more open culture where staff feel able to talk about their concerns is crucial, and support is key.

People Plan

The NHS’s People Plan, the workforce strategy for delivering its Long Term Plan, sets out the ambition for every staff member to have regular conversations focused on health and wellbeing with their line manager, including discussion of flexible working requirements and matters related to equality, diversity and inclusion. The NHS has also set up 40 staff mental health and wellbeing confidential hubs to provide colleagues with free-of-charge rapid access to assessment and local evidence-based mental health services and support, such as talking therapy and counselling.

Across wider organisations, mid-level management should be trained to better spot the signs of poor mental health and be able to proactively address these, and guidance should be given to individual staff members on how and where to ask for help. Employers may wish to refer to the measures set out in guidance from the Covid Trauma Response Working Group which, while It is also important that leaders foster an inclusive, compassionate and cooperate environment which creates a sense of belonging among employees, making them feel valued and giving them a sense they have a stake in their work.

designed to support early-stage responses to the pandemic, also apply to the longer-term effects of the crisis, and new challenges too.

Working from home

Where possible, health and social care organisations should also implement homebased and remote working to ensure a better work-life balance, although it must be noted that for some, remote working can have an adverse impact on their mental wellbeing because of increased feelings of loneliness.

Smaller measures should also be put in place to improve the day-to-day lives of employees. Research from the Nuffield Trust has coined this ‘hygiene factors’ and includes ensuring employees have access to amenities such as rest areas and car parking, as well as the correct equipment. These can help to mitigate problems in the short-term, easing overall pressure on the workforce.

Inclusive environment

It is also important that leaders foster an inclusive, compassionate and cooperate environment which creates a sense of belonging among employees, making them feel valued and giving them a sense they have a stake in their work. This is particularly effective in the health and social care sector, where workers are motivated by a sense of public service.

With the cost-of-living crisis deepening, financial concerns are increasing for much of the workforce, particularly those on lower wages. The sector must consider how it can adapt for this challenging period, and introduce measures which support employees. These could include subsidised meals at work, tax-free vouchers for rising bills, or even loans for public transport.

Improving – and maintaining – staff wellbeing is a priority, but there is no magic fix. The onus should be on continued investment into these initiatives over a longer period. L Debra Gers and Jordan Cummins will be discussing the challenge of workplace wellbeing within the health and social care sector as part of the upcoming Future Health Conference which is being run by Blake Morgan and taking place in November.

FURTHER INFORMATION

https://www.blakemorgan.co.uk/ future-health-conference/

Avoidable financial losses due to inefficiency in costing

The NHS has been dealing with funding challenges for more than a decade now, and experts predict more funding crises will continue and get worse over the foreseeable future. A 2020 report by the BBC reveals that we spent more than £156 billion on the NHS in 2019 – approximately 12 times more than we spent 70 years ago. Notably, healthcare costs are rising, increasing the size of the NHS budget, with an average increase of 1.4 per cent per year from 2009 to 2019

In this article, we will discuss how NHS organisations’ inefficiency when tracking procedure-level and patient-level costing makes NHS trusts incur avoidable financial losses. We will also propose an efficient and practical solution: utilising inventory management to track and manage costs.

Many NHS organisations don’t understand procedure-level costing

Unfortunately, many NHS organisations don’t know how much they spend on delivering healthcare procedures such as surgery. Some organisations unnecessarily spend more on a procedure than others because of adopting inefficient policies and practices or using inefficient healthcare equipment.

NHS organisations’ inefficiency when tracking and determining procedure delivery costs results in avoidable financial losses for their respective trusts. NHS trusts pay a fixed tariff for every procedure delivered. However, the inability to track costs means that trusts could be losing money on every procedure, adding to the cost pressure and funding crises.

How can implementing inventory management help?

Fortunately, NHS trusts can help ease the growing cost pressures and financial crises affecting the NHS by monitoring and managing procedure-level costing. Proper inventory management is one of the best ways to do this, as it can give NHS organisations valuable insights into the following factors.

Procedures’ tariff-to-cost ratios

The tariff-to-cost ratio refers to a comparison of the tariff paid and the cost incurred for each procedure. Proper inventory management can provide valuable insights into which procedures cost less to deliver than the tariff paid, enabling NHS trusts to capitalise on them.

Costly procedures

Some procedures cause unavoidable cost pressures, essentially making cost-control solutions useless. Fortunately, proper inventory management can also help NHS organisations identify procedures that are simply a cost pressure and manage them accordingly, such as allocating more tariffs or reducing the number of procedure deliveries.

The impact of different medical equipment on procedure delivery costs

Surgeons and other healthcare professionals can choose to use varying interchangeable medical equipment and items to conduct their procedures. Variations in the type of equipment and items used can mean that some surgeons spend more on procedure delivery than others, essentially causing cost pressures.

Fortunately, there is a simple solution to this problem: providing healthcare professionals with cost-efficient medical equipment and items.

Facilitating constructive discussions around procurement and product rationalisation can help convert cost pressures into cost benefits. Product rationalisation entails identifying and eliminating items that negatively impact the organisation’s strategic goals, such as reducing costs and losses.

The goal is to identify cost-effective items and make them available to healthcare professionals. Besides making cost-efficient items and equipment available, NHS organisations should also recommend that healthcare professionals use them instead of cost-inefficient alternatives, reducing cost pressures and increasing cost benefits.

Time spent on procedures Ideally, NHS healthcare facilities should attend to patients within four hours of arrival. Unfortunately, the summer of 2015 is the last time that the NHS in England met this target – many patients wait considerably longer than four hours to get seen in most NHS hospitals, adding to the organisation’s inefficiencies and cost pressures. Proper inventory tracking can enable NHS organisations to measure the amount of time spent on delivering different procedure types. It can also enable reviews on why some surgeons spend more time on procedure delivery than others.

NHS organisations can then use these insights to facilitate the sharing of knowledge of time-efficient practices between surgeons, reducing procedure delivery times for all surgeons and procedure types. Ultimately, this can help reduce patient waiting times to reduce cost pressures and improve throughput rates to create more cost benefits.

Resource allocation

As explained, proper inventory management can help NHS organisations determine different procedure types’ tariff-to-cost ratios. The organisations can then use these insights to make informed decisions on how and where to allocate resources for larger positive cost impacts. A more prudent resource allocation plan can enable organisations to reduce waiting times and increase procedure through put while reducing the potential burden of costs over budget sizes.

Proper inventory management can help NHS organisations reduce cost pressures and increase cost benefits for procedure deliveries. The Scan4Safety program is based on GS1 standards and can help improve inventory management and supply chain management. L

FURTHER INFORMATION