Helping CLCH improve the efficiency of its field teams

We helped Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust (CLCH) to improve the efficiency of its team delivering care out in the community. This project resulted in:

• 27% reduction in travelling time for its health visitors
• £426,000 saving for the trust over the next 3 years

By providing the trust with a bird’s eye view of its staff’s working patterns, we were able to highlight inefficiencies previously not visible to them. For example, our analysis showed that different health visitors were frequently being sent to the same location within hours of each other to see similar cases, when one health visitor could have visited them all.

The team’s appointment allocation model was identified as being at the root of the problem. When appointments were being allocated, patients were being referred to the health visitor with the most availability. Other factors were not being considered in the process.

Working closely with the team at CLCH we redesigned its appointment allocation process using historic caseload analysis whilst also considering other factors, such as best practice guidelines, staff’s local knowledge or the demands of the diverse population needs of inner London.

The success of the project has meant that the trust has been able to increase facing time for patients, provide better continuity of care and improve the uptake of its patient reviews. Managers have also benefited from having greater control. They now have greater visibility over their staff’s working patterns and their time has been freed up from administrative planning activities.

Judith Barlow, Associate Director of Quality at CLCH, commented:  “As the biggest provider of Health Visiting in London our challenge is to ensure we help our clinicians have a reasonable working day out and about in London, but also ensure we deliver the Healthy Child Programme to the children we need to see in timely way. With zoning we have seen a real improvement in the uptake of our 2 year reviews.”

Annabel Burkmisher, Pathway Lead at CLCH, commented: “The CPHVA reports that travelling is one of the most stressful parts of a community practitioner’s role. By implementing zoning we are reducing the stress caused to staff from travelling by reducing the amount of time they spend doing this.”