Workforce Strategy and Planning

The North West LETB, Health Education North West (HENW), identified the need to investigate the requirements of primary care in respect of workforce development, starting with GP Practices. As such the LETB has launched a Primary Care Intelligence and Demand Project (running from 2013 until 2015). This project sits under a wider remit of work, within the Integrated Workforce unit.The Integrated Workforce Unit (IWU) has been developed by HENW in response to the changing organisational landscape and context in order to maximise the use of resources across a number of current work streams.

National General Practice (GP) Profiles are designed as a tool to support GPs, clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and PCTs to ensure that they are providing and commissioning effective and appropriate healthcare services for their local population.Using a variety of graphical displays such as spine charts and population pyramids, the tool represents a range of practice-level indicators drawn from the latest available data, including:     

The primary aim of the GP Tool is to collect information on primary care practice staff. This includes GPs, nurses, direct patient care workers, practice management and apprentices so that:Health Education Yorkshire and the Humber (HEYH) can invest in training and education in primary care GP practices are supported in workforce planningCommissioners of services can understand the current and future workforce challenges in Primary CareThe pilot at HEYH has developed a web-based tool to collect and record primary care workforce information.

The Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) integrated workforce planning tool was first developed as part of the CAMHS National Workforce Programme (2011) and has since been further developed by Cme in the Community, in partnership with the Child and Maternal Health Intelligence Network (ChiMat), where it is hosted.

Health Education England’s mandate recognises the importance of the integrated care agenda. It commits to work closely with the Health and Social Care sector on workforce planning, modelling, training and development, to ensure a workforce responsive to the changing models of care both now and in the future.To ensure the success of integrated Health and Social Care the workforce needs to support redesign and this can only be achieved if this runs in parallel with workforce development.

Based on current available data, the healthcare science (HCS) workforce is understood to form approximately 5% of the workforce, yet their work is believed to provide input to around 80% of all diagnostic decisions.But wait, do we (the NHS) really understand where healthcare scientists are within our organisations, what roles they are undertaking and even how many there actually are?The answer will probably come as no surprise, but evidence shows that at organisational level there is very little knowledge about the healthcare science workforce.

There are 290 recommendations within the Francis Report which are fully outlined in the Report’s Executive Summary.This briefing is a summary of the key recommendations that Dean Royles, director of NHS Employers, has identified as having a workforce focus. Dean is a regular conference speaker, published in a number of journals and provides expert opinion in the national media. He was voted HR’s Most Influential Practitioner in 2012. 

Within most NHS hospitals the healthcare science workforce is likely to be the second largest workforce responsible for delivering diagnostic investigation and interventions. Yet their existence is still largely hidden, not only from their own individual employers, but also from the general public. The skills possessed by this workforce are critical in ensuring that the NHS is able to recover from the current financial pressures and also to deliver robust high quality services across patient pathways from primary, through to secondary and tertiary care.

This information is primarily aimed at service commissioners and workforce planners, however it is also an awareness raising tool for all in respect of a small profession that is often misunderstood and, in some cases, not fully recognised in terms of its importance.Two key facts about the Orthoptist profession:

•       they save lives and make a real and highly valuable difference to the patients they treat
•       they offer value for money services and can make a significant contribution to cost savings and the QIPP agenda

Workforce Assurance is the process of managing risk and assuring that the composition of the workforce delivers safe, effective and high quality care. The workforce assurance tool was developed to help support this process. The project team responsible for development had representatives from the ten Strategic Health Authorities (SHAs) and the Department of Health (DH). Each SHA formed their own internal project team to engage locally with clinicians and managers and contributed to the development of the metrics within the tool.