Department rotas: The core of a healthy organisation
23rd October 2023
We hosted our most recent event on Friday 29th September 2023 at the Surgeons Quarter in Edinburgh. It was our first event held in Scotland since 2016 centring around the theme of ‘Department rotas: the core of a healthy organisation’, and included talks from the Rotamap team as well as guest speakers from a cross-section of NHS specialties.
Lunch and the drinks reception provided a time for Rotamap and NHS staff to mingle
When considering the structure of an NHS organisation it is the individual clinicians, departments, directorates and divisions working both independently and together in a cohesive and efficient manner that contribute to a healthy organisation. Lately, there has been a call to meet organisation-wide digital requirements, a few examples being divisionwide reporting, streamlining of payment processes, and interoperating with other suppliers. This event demonstrated how Rotamap can meet these requirements while still prioritising the needs of individual departments. This builds strength and engagement at the core of our services which is then disseminated to meet organisation-wide needs.
Dr Jenny Edwards from NHS Glasgow and Clyde Anaesthetics described how CLWRota meant she could provide a robust leave process that met the main requirements of her anaesthetist colleagues. Dr Beth Sage explained how essential Medirota is for her Respiratory Medicine department at NHS Highlands. Below you can see Dr Michael Ng’s dive into some of the reports gathered from Medirota to show the impact of the pandemic on his Plastics department at NHS Tayside.
Watch Dr Michael Ng's talk
From the Rotamap team, Henry gave an overview of new features which focused on the mobile experience for clinicians. He illustrated the integration of personal calendars, the addition of an Overview app that allows users to see and contact on-call clinicians in other areas, and how clinicians can simply file electronic additional payment claims from their mobile.
Adam and Luke demonstrated how to manage all the different stages of shift based rotas on our Medirota and CLWRota services, with a specific focus on junior doctor rota management. Their talk covered how to establish minimum cover requirements using the Shifts feature, then how to design and operationally manage live rotas which consider existing rota information through Staging and the Group Summary View. They concluded by showing how this rota data can be used as the basis for Exception Reporting which is currently in development.
You can learn more about these features by going to the Help link in the top right corner of your Medirota or CLWRota site or by contacting support@rotamap.net.
Alex provided a compelling look at some of the data pulled from our services after an NHS trust implemented our services to bolster their 6-4-2 theatre planning policy. Based on our analysis of the trust’s data we saw leave being approved further in advance, with the Overview allowing gaps in theatre staffing to be recognised sooner, earlier assignments were being made to the rotas, and there was a reduction in the reliance on expensive extra locums.
Watch Alex's improving efficiencies through theatre planning talk
We concluded the event by discussing what Rotamap is doing to ensure that our focus on providing rich and reliable rostering data is used more widely across an organisation. We work with organisations to use our Central Reporting service as a data hub, creating oversight of roster health and organisation-wide reporting. Central Reporting creates a flow of existing data from departmental rotas into one place rather than building new modules or systems which departments have to use. This allows central organisation requirements to be met while individual departments continue managing their rotas autonomously. This reiterates our desire to create a digital ecosystem through interoperability to create more robust data connections with other software providers.
It was a pleasure for us to visit Scotland’s capital and to see and hear such enthusiasm for our services. More than 2600 clinicians in Scotland use our services, with rota teams using this data regularly. This event demonstrated that these teams regard data as critical to their daily job as well as for reporting across an organisation.
If you would like to receive additional information from the event or would like to discuss setting up any of the new features or reporting from the day, please get in touch with us at support@rotamap.net or call +44 020 7631 1555.
Agenda
The agenda for the day was as follows:
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Welcome and introduction
Francesca Smith, Rotamap
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New features
Henry Wyrley-Birch, Rotamap
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Designing and managing shift based rotas
Luke Housego and Adam Cansfield, Rotamap
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Guest speaker
Dr Jenny Edwards, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Anaesthetics
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Guest speaker
Dr Michael Ng, NHS Tayside Plastics
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Improving efficiencies through theatre planning
Alex Bones, Rotamap
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Guest speaker
Dr Beth Sage, NHS Highlands Respiratory Medicine
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The future of Rotamap
Joel Moore, Rotamap
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Conclusion
Francesca Smith, Rotamap