A new automated scheduling system has been implemented at Sussex Community Foundation Trust (SCFT) following successful pilots in Leicestershire and Hertfordshire.
The Trust has gone live with TPP’s AutoPlanner, to provide staff scheduling functionality, and automatically book visits in the community on a daily basis. The Trust is also progressing the tool to be used across Trusts in the region to support collaboration between organisations and increase the number of healthcare teams active on the platform.
The company said the tool automates the administrative time that previously was spent on allocating staff resources. It factors in geography, patient/clinical preferences and the type of care needed in order to ensure that the right clinician is matched with the right patient.
In a pilot in Leicestershire, the implementation of the system lead to 12 hours of clinical staff time saved per day. In this pilot there was an increase of 40% in face-to-face contact time between patients and nurses, rising from 31% to 71%.
Kelly Rocher, Clinical Lead at SCFT, added: “It’s so much quicker. It’s going to make a great difference to the way we allocate our visits and save a lot of time.”
Similarly, since the implementation at SCFT, a 34% time saving on visit allocation has been recorded, in addition to a 22% reduction in mileage. Furthermore, 23% more visits were made by community nurses since AutoPlanner was implemented.
