Newham University NHS Hospital Trust has selected Kronos for Healthcare from Kronos Incorporated to standardise rostering processes, reduce admin levels for senior ward staff, provide excellent levels of patient care and reduce costs.
The solution will be rolled out for all 2,100 staff including 619 nurses and 111 midwives.
The project forms part of the Trust’s turnaround programme, and is predicted to deliver significant long-term financial benefits.
Kronos for Healthcare will also enable Newham to accurately match nursing skills to shift requirements thereby ensuring that the patient acuity is properly recognised in resourcing clinical areas.
“We reviewed 26 vendors before selecting Kronos for Healthcare,” explained Lorraine Moore, Programme Manager for Business Development at Newham University Hospital NHS Trust:
“Our selection of Kronos for Healthcare was based on its functionality for nurse rostering, fully integrated time and attendance and the ability to link into acuity-based scoring. “Our senior nursing staff and ward managers were more than ready for a solution to our rostering challenges and have embraced the Kronos solution wholeheartedly.”
Prior to selecting Kronos, Newham University Hospital NHS Trust had no formal system for rostering, or time and attendance.
A combination of Excel spreadsheets, Word documents and handwritten rotas were in use and were usually completed by the ward manager or senior ward staff, commonly taking approximately three days per month to compile.
The process was complicated and involved balancing staff availability and skills to ensure there was correct coverage all day, every day 24/7, 365.
In addition, the rotas were also used to manually note holiday requests, shift swaps, sickness and general absence.
The Kronos for Healthcare solution will be used to streamline the rostering process, giving ward managers real-time visibility to who is expected on a shift, allow them to deal with all holiday requests amicably, and enable nurses to offer themselves up for shift swaps.
It will also allow ward managers to spot inconsistencies regarding cover enabling them to respond quickly by contacting agency or bank nurses to fill in gaps all on one system.
Creation of a roster is expected to take as little as one hour once ward managers are familiar with the system.
In addition, rostering can now be planned to cover a 12-month period where previously six weeks was the maximum.
Lorraine Moore explained: “The Kronos rostering system has been very popular with staff and managers because it permits ward managers to create an ideal roster to cover a full month, taking into account holidays and skills cover. Other managers can also roster staff shift patterns, such as on-call and clinic activities, on the same system, quickly and simply. This way, all ward staff have a good idea of what they can expect, in terms of rosters, for a defined period and nursing staff are given advanced notice of future work patterns.”
She concluded: “Reducing costs and providing excellent levels of patient care are not mutually exclusive goals. We expect to see a return on the cost element of implementing Kronos within 12 months.”
“High levels of patient care and cost savings are generally not thought to go hand in hand, but Newham University Hospital NHS Trust is clearly demonstrating that the eradication of time consuming manual systems can make each ward run more efficiently to the benefit of patients.” Said Keith Statham, Managing Director of Kronos UK, “We’re delighted to be working with the Trust and look forward to a strong partnership with them throughout the implementation stage and beyond”.
