North Cumbria introduces Patchwork Health e-rostering

North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust has launched an e-rostering platform to boost the wellbeing and retention of its medics and improve workforce reporting.

The solution was built and delivered in partnership with Patchwork Health. The e-rostering tool gives managers access to all rostering rota-building and leave management activities in a single solution. As a result workforce visibility is improved and it is easier for departmental rotas to be efficiently and strategically planned in line with patient demand.

In addition, a connected app allows medics to more easily view their rotas and submit annual leave requests.

Dr Adrian Clements, executive medical director at North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We are excited to be working with Patchwork Health to deliver the trust’s medical e-rostering, recognising the needs of our staff for an intuitive and flexible solution to cover the medical workforce. The patchwork team has been superb at ensuring a safe and supportive rollout to our first cohorts of staff giving us a smooth and seamless switch over. Supporting us to find new ways to actualise flexible working and service demands, we look forward to expanding our staffing reach across wider users and additional departments as well as introducing currently untapped capabilities with the new system.”

The platform is also helping to ensure that staff can be rostered and deployed flexibly in line with demand. It can surface a wealth of data insights across all of the participating departments, giving managers more visibility of available workers to reduce reliance on third-party agencies to fill staffing gaps.

An exception reporting platform is also built-in, making it easy for medics to flag any additional hours they work outside of their contracted rota. This helps optimise staff wellbeing and patient safety as well as protect doctors’ training time.

Dr Anas Nader, CEO and co-founder at Patchwork Health, said: “As services face intensifying patient demand and national staff shortages continue to rise, flexible, data-led staffing has never been more crucial. It’s encouraging to see trusts like North Cumbria Integrated Care paving the way through innovation to unlock this level of flexibility and insight.”

North Cumbria rolled out the new e-rostering system in December 2023, to General and Acute Medicine, General Surgery, and Women’s and Children’s at West Cumberland Hospital and Cumberland Infirmary.

It follows in the footsteps of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust who rolled out the same system in February this year.