Workforce at the heart of the NHS: Building a tech company to fight the NHS staffing crisis
Dr Ahmed Shahrabani,
Co-founder of Locum’s Nest
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the NHS, an institution that has been at the heart of the UK’s healthcare system since its inception. The NHS has transformed the lives of millions of people, providing care and support to those who need it most. However, as with any large organisation, the NHS also faces its fair share of challenges. One of the most pressing of these is the staffing crisis which threatens to undermine the quality of care provided by the NHS. And whereas the workforce crisis is not a new issue and has been ever present in varying extremes over the years, set against current increasing stressors, the workforce, although undoubtedly one of the greatest assets of the NHS, is also currently one of the most affected parts of the NHS.
As a doctor, I have the privilege of working within the NHS, which means that I see first-hand the immense pressure that the healthcare system is under due to the staffing crisis. For the frontline workers of the 5th largest employer worldwide, the shortage of staff has led to increased workloads and stress, accompanied by a decline in mental health. For patients, this has meant longer waiting times and a decline in the quality of patient care. This situation is not only unacceptable for patients but also for the staff who are working tirelessly and sometimes at the detriment of their mental health and personal lives to provide care.
A few years ago as a new doctor, fresh out of medical school, I worked in the medical wards of St Helier Hospital in South London and every Friday, the rota manager would ask me and my colleagues if we were willing to cover a weekend shift due to rota gaps. If we couldn't cover it, the coordinator would start a hectic process of contacting different people via texts, emails, and phone calls to find someone who could. This often led to resorting to expensive locum/recruitment agencies and pressuring already burnt out staff members. This recurring ritual is what drove my Co-Founder Nick and I to start a company focused on solving the NHS staffing crisis.
Around six years ago, we left our careers in medicine to tackle what we saw as one of the biggest challenges facing the NHS: a chronic shortage of skilled healthcare professionals and a burnt out workforce. We knew that by leveraging technology and data, we had an opportunity to make a difference and so, we founded Locum’s Nest, with a mission to provide a platform that would connect vacant shifts with skilled healthcare professionals, helping to bridge the gap between supply and demand in an easy, accessible, and sustainable way for all teams involved.
We know that a key factor contributing to the staffing crisis in the NHS is the working conditions for staff. Many healthcare professionals work long hours, with limited breaks and high levels of stress. Our company recognises the importance of a healthy work-life balance for our staff and strives to provide a supportive work environment that promotes employee well-being. And at the heart of our company is a deep commitment to the NHS workforce. We believe that by providing healthcare professionals with the support and resources they need to do their jobs, we can help reduce the strain on the NHS and ensure that patients receive the best possible care. Our platform has been designed with this in mind, offering a range of features that make it easy for NHS staff teams to manage their workforce and ensure that staff are deployed where they are needed most with their needs and capacity also in mind.
Evolving Locum's Nest to meet the needs of the NHS workforce
At the beginning of our journey, Nick and I spent a year developing a mobile platform that would give doctors more autonomy and flexibility in choosing when they worked extra shifts. The initial platform had two components:
A free to download mobile-app for healthcare professionals: To upload their credentials in a secure Digital Passport. With the Digital Passport, doctors could save all their employment paperwork in one place and work across multiple NHS Trusts without having to redo HR checks. Once doctors completed their Digital Passport, they could choose the specialty, grade, and area they want to work in, and the app will show them shifts that matched their preferences.
A web platform for hospitals to advertise and manage shifts in real-time: Giving staffing teams real-time oversight of their organisation and allowing them to advertise hundreds of shifts in minutes to a growing community of doctors. This ensures that wards are staffed safely and reliably with qualified personnel.
Since then we have evolved into a team of over 35 people, an ecosystem of 7 products and a whole range of solutions that we work with our partner trusts to develop, implement and measure depending on their needs. These solutions vary from staff bank management, rate control, work compliance, reporting and analytics, agency management, to collaborative staff bank formation and change management, etc. Our partner trusts get so much more than just an app to manage their workforce. Our tech solutions are only one part of the equation and we take a holistic approach to solving NHS trusts’ challenges and pain points, during onboarding and implementation, providing support throughout every step of the way and pivoting when needed.
When we first launched the platform in our first partner hospital, we had only five doctors on board. Fast-forward to today, we have over 50,000 registered healthcare professionals working with over 50+ NHS trusts. In 2022 alone, our ecosystem saved the NHS over £50m and helped provide over 5m hours of patient care by vetted healthcare professionals. We also ended 2022 on amazing news for our partner NHS trusts, 21 of them were shortlisted for 7 HSJ partnership awards across 5 different categories. This acknowledgement in various categories highlights the diverse range of effects that collaborative solutions can have beyond their direct impact on the workforce. These effects can include financial savings, increased patient care hours, improved staff well-being, sustainability, and more.
As a company, we firmly believe in the strength of a collaborative workforce and utilising technology to support it. With our workforce solutions, we have helped NHS trusts across the country achieve a shift fill rate of more than 90%, resulting in significant cost savings while also empowering their staff.
None of this would have been possible without collaboration with our NHS partner organisations and the valuable feedback we get from all our users to help improve our solutions.
Biggest challenge and lesson
One of the biggest challenges we faced in building our company was gaining the trust of NHS organisations. As doctors by trade ourselves, we understood the importance of building relationships with different teams across NHS organisations. We spent a lot of time speaking to partner NHS organisations, understanding their needs, and tailoring our platform to meet those needs.
Equally, one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned over the last few years is that you should always stick to your values as a person and as a company. Since Nick and I started Locum’s Nest we always ensured that whatever decision we made, it ultimately would improve the outcome of the patient – either by improving worker wellbeing or by giving NHS Trusts the tools they need to monitor, forecast and communicate better. We confidently take a stand for what we believe is right, treating NHS staff as customers of the NHS and as people and not as cogs and bearings in a much larger machine.
What does the future hold for Locum’s Nest
We are proud of what we have achieved so far, but we know that there is still a lot of work to be done. The importance of workforce in the NHS cannot be overstated. The staff of the NHS are the backbone of the healthcare system and are responsible for delivering high-quality care to patients.
And whereas the staffing crisis continues to pose a significant threat to the NHS, we are committed to doing our part to help solve this problem. As we look to the future, we are excited to continue working with our NHS partners and welcome new ones to improve the quality of care provided to patients across the UK while helping the NHS workforce thrive.
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On a final note, I would love to hear your thoughts and opinions on how workforce technology can play an even more significant role in addressing the current staffing crisis:
Share your insights by messaging me on LinkedIn or emailing me on ahmed@locumsnest.co.uk and let's continue the conversation on how we can leverage technology to create more efficient, effective, and sustainable solutions for the NHS workforce of today and tomorrow.