Neutral Vendor services

Neutral Vendor Collaboration enabled cost savings and operational efficiencies across three Trusts

Mersey Care NHS Trust, Wirral Community NHS Trust, and Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Trust are all part of the same Integrated Care Board (ICB). These Trusts were eager to collaborate in managing their temporary staffing expenditures and reduce their dependence on agency workers. Although each Trust had different temporary staffing solutions with varying contract end dates, they shared a common objective: to select a single provider to manage the agency supply chain and direct engagement provisions across all three Trusts.

The Trusts engaged in multiple discussions with NOE CPC (North of England Commercial Procurement Collaborative) to outline their requirements. Through these discussions, the group agreed that a Neutral Vendor model would be the best approach for all staffing groups. Given the significant level of agency spend across the three Trusts, a formal procurement process was required.

1. Establish a unified provider and approach across all three Trusts.
2. Implement a Neutral Vendor and Direct Engagement solution.
3. Improve staffing fill rates across the three Trusts.
4. Provide detailed management information to enable collaborative initiatives aimed at reducing agency expenditure.
5. Align the supplier base across all Trusts.
6. Streamline processes for temporary staffing and finance teams to increase operational efficiency.

Following a competitive tender process, the collaborative awarded Agile Workforce Services the contract for both Neutral Vendor and Direct Engagement provisions. Due to the different contract end dates for each Trust's existing arrangements, a phased implementation approach was agreed upon, with the final Trust scheduled to go live in April 2024.

Agile Workforce led the project, using Gantt charts, risk registers, and weekly project meetings to ensure the project stayed on schedule. Agile also co-ordinated with the incumbent providers, guiding the transition and managing the migration process.

Stakeholder engagement was critical to the project’s success. Agile held presentations for key internal stakeholders to ensure all departments were fully informed and prepared ahead of the go-live dates. Additionally, Agile conducted virtual sessions for all suppliers, ensuring that agencies and candidates understood the new arrangements before the transition.

The implementation timeline was as follows:
• Mersey Care NHS Trust went live on 29th January 2024.
• Wirral Community NHS Trust went live on 12th February 2024.
• Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Trust went live on 8th April 2024.

“Our Trust awarded Agile as our Neutral Vendor and Direct Engagement provider at the end of 2023. Prior to Agile our Trust did not have any solutions in place for agency management so these services were brand new to our Trust. Agile supported the trust to quickly establish a key project group with representation from all key areas of the Trust and gave a clear plan to work to over the implementation period. Given the size of the Trust there were lots of different stakeholders to capture for training, and Agile ran a significant number of training sessions for our teams both on the new services and on the LMS system which was being introduced. Agile also came on site throughout the go live period to ensure that the go live went smoothly. The solution was implemented seamlessly with no disruption for any agency workers, and Agile have become an extension of our temporary staffing team”

Cathie Brocklehurst, Strategic Lead for Workforce Operations Services & Workforce Governance, Mersey Care NHS Trust

Sheffield Children’s NHS Trust: Achieving bank fill rates in excess of 90%

Sheffield Children’s NHS Trust had carried out good work in gaining grip and control over their agency spending. They had seen some traction in starting to build their Bank of workers.

The Trust already had a Master Vendor arrangement and a technology platform, to support administration for the Bank which had yielded some growth. This had, however, begun to plateau, and the agency spending was starting to increase once more.

With increasing pressure from NHSE/I to reduce agency spending and reliance on agency staffing, the Trust needed to review its options on what further solutions it could put in place to achieve this.

The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital: Managed bank solutions delivering superior fill rates over tech-only options.

The Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust (the Trust) previously managed their internal medical staff bank via a technology-only platform. Although the Trust had seen some initial increases in their bank uptake, they found this had plateaued over time.
This, in conjunction with their Medical People Services department going through a restructure, meant that the Trust required additional resources to support the functions required for an effective medical bank.
With their current contract only able to provide an App and an IT platform, the Trust was seeking support to increase bank uptake and provide assurance regarding the compliance of workers.

The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust: New Direct Engagement model live in under 2 weeks

Following a successful presentation in early 2019, we were awarded the contract to replace the Trust’s incumbent Direct Engagement provider – under HTE’s relevant Framework.

The United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS trust: A managed bank staff bank solution

Our sister company, Holt Doctors, were appointed as master vendor to United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust (ULH) and two other Trusts in 2016. The relationship has been very successful with the Trust seeing significant benefits in terms of savings on agency rates, high fill rates and the increased efficiencies in utilising the LMS IT portal for agency bookings and Direct Engagement.