Powertec, one of the United Kingdom’s leading providers of healthcare software, today announced the launch of Optimize-Roster, a new rostering system designed for all staff working in healthcare including nurses, doctors and non-clinical staff.
Optimize-Roster can be used by acute hospitals, primary care trusts, mental health trusts, care homes and private hospitals.
Optimize-Roster offers a sophisticated e-rostering solution which is supported by the company’s twenty-year experience in the UK healthcare market.
Optimize-Roster enables staff to enter their shift requests through Self Service and provides tools to assist the manager in matching these against the ward or department’s requirements.
Workforce management tools analyse each roster to ensure maximum cost savings.
Contracted hours are tracked, absence closely monitored and lost time significantly reduced. Extensive reporting facilities are available to ward and Trust managers.
Optimize-Roster fully interfaces from and to the NHS Electronic Staff Record system which maintains data integrity.
Automatic timesheets save time and improve payroll accuracy.
The cost savings come from the way in which Optimize-Roster enables the manager to efficiently balance the needs of the ward with the needs of the staff.
By maximizing the use of available resources, Optimize-Roster reduces bank and agency staff usage by at least 50%, reduces sickness levels, and can achieve a 5% saving on nursing staff costs.
In a typical Trust, this can amount to savings of over £1m per year.
The system produced cost savings of over £1m for The Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust in its first year of operation.
The aim was to introduce flexible working policies in line with the Improving Working Lives Standard, as well as to achieve integration with its HR and payroll systems and, crucially, to reduce expenditure on temporary staff.
Tony Ive, Managing Director of Powertec said:
“The launch of Optimize-Roster is significant for us because we can demonstrate that our e-rostering solution can save healthcare organisations sizeable parts of their budgets, improve the flexibility and quality of the working lives of their staff and improve patient care. We work closely with our healthcare clients to maximise their efficiency”.
“We are proud of the collaboration with The Royal Berkshire Hospital which has produced solid improvements in the work life balance of their staff, enabled the Trust to achieve its targets and saved valuable NHS resources.”
Clare Edmondson, Director of Workforce Development and HR said:
“Undoubtedly, Optimize-Roster has delivered great benefits to us at The Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust, not only in terms of benefits to patients, to staff and to our ward managers, but also in terms of our financial efficiency. This year alone, Optimize-Roster has paid for itself, so the major benefit for us has certainly been in cost savings”.
“This has been the single biggest item in our cost efficiency plan this year. Optimize-Roster has helped us to deliver in excess of £1 million saving on our pay bill, largely in nursing costs, and bearing in mind we only started half way through the year, Optimize-Roster has undoubtedly exceeded our expectations”.
“It’s our intention to roll Optimize-Roster out across the whole Trust, so it will be a population of around 4,500 staff and the next major grouping that we’ll roll it out to will be our doctors”.
