North East Collaborative Bank. Delivered.

Reducing medical agency spend by 20%.

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£11.5m saved since FY18/19, with an average annual saving of £2.3m

Over 2,148 active DiTs registered on the bank

32,000 shifts covering 137,619 hours booked between July 23 – July 24

Worker Passporting saved 3 mins per booking, a total of 49.45 hours in one month

The Challenge

In 2017, Liaison Workforce was tasked with developing and implementing a collaborative bank across North East England and North Cumbria for Doctors in Training (DiT), to bring extra rigour and transparency in the area of compliance.

The bank was required to reduce the overall expenditure associated with medical temporary workforce, benefitting from workforce intelligence detailing hours worked by DiT, and being able to passport workers across the region to facilitate true collaboration.

The Solution

We worked with the Lead Employer Trust (LET) for the North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care System to develop Flexishift – an innovative collaborative bank service for Doctors in Training.

Since 2017, the bank has expanded to include nine Trusts across the region, enabling passporting of workers and increasing flexibility for clinicians.

Working in partnership with HEE NE, we introduced robust compliance measures, developing our technology to track Doctor rotations and creating significant time efficiencies through managing worker compliance and eligibility.

Our Client Services team continue to proactively ensure the best usage of the collaborative bank on a long-term basis.

The Outcomes

Total savings of over £11.5m

Average annual saving of £2.3m vs agency use in the last 3 years.

More than 2,148 active DiTs registered on the bank, covering 80 specialities (including 9 difficult).

Between July 2023 and July 2024, 32,000 shifts covering 137,619 hours were booked.

Average fill rate of 76% across all specialties between September 23 – July 24.

Worker passporting saving an average of 3 minutes per booking, totalling 49.45 admin hours in one month alone across the region

Many specialties have seen an increase in their fill rate in the past 12 months

We’ve been successful in securing regional collaboration, not only in terms of addressing and harmonising pay rates, but also in improving the patient safety side. With some fifty percent of the doctors rotating around the region, we’re now using a workforce that is aware of how we operate within the region and the systems at the individual hospital trust sites. The collaborative bank ensures that we have doctors and dentists working at the level, specialty and competence that they have been trained to do within the NHS.

Linsey Richards

Head of Human Resources, Lead Employer Trust, Health Education England North East.

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Find out more about Liaison Workforce’s bank and collaborative bank solutions, and how they can benefit your organisation or system.

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