Wesley recently got a new job as the lead in the radiology department at Richmond House NHS Trust. The retiring lead had left a note on his desk,
“To whom it may concern, your first job is to understand what the leaks in capacity are costing”.
Wesley scratched his head, “What do they mean, “leaks in capacity”.
But Wesley was an intelligent lad and realised that they must be the difference between the department's expected clinical output and its actual output. He studied the job plans. He calculated that in the 4 months since the start of the financial year the 80 PAs of weekly reporting should have delivered 4,480 hours of expected reporting in the 4 months1.
He opened the top drawer of his inherited desk. There was another note,
“Best of luck, you will need this!”.
The post-it note was stuck to a small book with hundreds of reporting codes and standard times for reporting in it. Wesley knew what to do. He grabbed the RIS report for the last 4 months and tallied up the actual hours of work using the number of reports and the book of time standards.
Although the department expected to deliver 4,480 hours of reporting, it had only got 3,360 hours of reporting. The match between actual hours and expected hours of reporting was only 75%. For whatever reason the department had leaked 1,120 hours of reporting activity.
Wesley logged onto look at the extra capacity paid for in the last 4 months. The department had paid for 3,300 CT scans under WLI payments at a cost of £100,000.
This equated to 935 hours of activity. If the department hadn’t leaked capacity there would have been enough to cover the extra capacity paid for. A match of 75% between job plan and actual reporting had resulted in capacity leaks that had cost the department £100,000 in 4 months.
Wesley knew that he needed to understand where the capacity was leaking. But it was time consuming and what he needed was software to do this for him. There was only one company to call, Staffing Science, the experts in software for aligning service delivery to patient demand.
Job Plan Match is not just for radiology but any department lead wanting to monitor the match between job plans and activity. Follow Wesley's lead and click here to book a chat with the experts.
[1] Twenty consultants, averaging 4 PAs, is 80 PAs a week. Assuming all PAs in normal hours you would expect 320 hours a week of reporting activity. Four months is one third of the year during which you would expect 42 weeks of activity if all consultants took their leave entitlement i.e. 20 * 4 * 4 *14 = 4,480 hours.