Menu
As widely reported in the media and national policy/publications, demand for general practice care is increasing. At the same time, there are challenges in recruiting and retaining GP doctors and an ageing nursing workforce. The NHS has introduced new roles to meet this demand in a different way. However, these roles require supervision and integration to enable multi-disciplinary working and to deliver improved health outcomes for all local people.
Given all this, there is a requirement for robust workforce planning and delivery however, many ICSs struggle to understand or access their baseline data. ICSs often do not have clarity on their staff numbers or how these numbers break down by profession and geography. Further, ICSs do not have sight of how their workforce compares to other systems, including the extent of their contribution to national workforce growth targets.
The only regular source of primary care workforce data comes from the National Workforce Reporting System (NWRS). Employing practices and PCNs record their workforce information in NWRS, and NHS Digital regularly extracts and publishes this data on its website. There are well-known data quality issues with NWRS data caused by practices and PCNs not understanding the importance of the data, not having systematic processes that ensure regular updating of their workforce information, and mis-recording staff.
To address these challenges and aims, our client, a newly formed Integrated Care System, engaged Xylem to support the establishment of a primary care workforce baseline to inform workforce planning which they wanted to use to understand their workforce better, identify current and emerging issues, and develop actions to ensure a sufficient pipeline of future staff as well as build resilience in service provision as demand continues to increase. The overall aims were:
Collaborating with our client and specialist partner, we carried out an initial two-week discovery phase which resulted in agreeing the following steps which we began implementing:
“To deliver this project successfully we required a unique set of skills and particular qualities that we didn’t have in-house. Starting from a blank canvas, Xylem and their team helped design, co-create and implement our system workforce dashboard over an 18 month period. This leading edge intelligence tool is equipping our system to understand our current workforce, develop our strategy, produce our workforce plans and drive action to ensure we have a pipeline of staff, competent to deliver services and ensure the future health and wellbeing of the people of the Black County. Its critical importance lies in the NHS drive to improve access to primary care. We need the right workforce, now and going forward, to ensure patients can see a primary care professional to meet their needs. It’s a truly outstanding piece of work and Xylem and their team were instrumental in its creation.”
– Associate Director of Primary Care, Black Country ICB
