A recent investigation conducted by The Telegraph in the UK has revealed shockingly wasteful expenditure in the National Health Service.NHS spending on temporary workers has hit a record high, £3.3 billion to be exact (about 6.6 billion AUD). Catastrophic levels of debt are being blamed on spiralling agency bills. In other words, the reliance on agency nurses, doctors and other healthcare workers, is costing a fortune.You might think this isn’t really our problem, but you’d be wrong.The cost of hiring temporary, and more expensive agency staff is hitting our healthcare system too. Anyone responsible for rostering for an Australian healthcare facility knows the dramas of attempting to have enough staff working all the time in a non-stop care environment.When someone calls in sick, or doesn’t show up to a shift, the pressure of getting someone to replace them can result in admin workers relying on getting in agency staff.This isn’t their fault! You can’t have insufficient staff working in healthcare, it could cause negligence at no fault of the working staff. Simply, if there isn’t enough staff members working, sufficient care can’t be provided, no matter how good those working are at their jobs.In addition to agency nurses, doctors and healthcare workers being more costly to the organisation, they are often less productive than the permanent staff. This is because they aren’t familiar with the facility, staff, or patients.So it kind of seems like a lose-lose situation. You have to make sure there are enough healthcare staff working at all times or the level of care will suffer. However, resorting to agency staff is expensive, and will also limit the quality of care due to the unfamiliarity of the nurse/doctor with the environment.That’s why a few years back, Bupa Aged Care came to us. Now, they use SMS as their complete rostering solution, and find themselves never needing to resort to the costly agency staff. With a better communication strategy, they can meet their own staffing needs internally. You can read all the details of how they achieved this on our Bupa customer story! If you don’t want to experience the extra costs of agency healthcare staff, then give us a call today on 1300 764 946 for a cheaper and easier alternative. We can help you make sure your organisation has enough staff on board to carry out their important work!
Prachi Bametha
Marketing Coordinator, Esendex Australia