Southport and Ormskirk partners up with Patchwork Health

Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust has partnered with Patchwork Health to roll out a new clinical staffing solution for their medical workforce.

The technology connects clinicians to vacant bank shifts through an app, enabling trusts to reduce costly reliance on locum agencies and to offer staff better access to flexible working.

The platform was created by two NHS junior doctors, Dr Anas Nader and Dr Jing Ouyang, who wanted to modernise how clinicians could seek out and book temporary shifts after experiencing issues with hospital banks first-hand.

The technology is already being used across 12 NHS trusts, over 25 clinical sites, with more than 10,000 medics benefitting from the platform.

Jennifer Pennifold, head of resourcing at the trust, said: “Ensuring we are creating the best working environment for our clinicians is one of our top priorities.

“We’re therefore excited to be partnering with Patchwork to introduce a more robust and cost effective approach to temporary staffing. We’re looking forward to rolling this technology out across the trust and working closely with Patchwork to modernise our approach to safe staffing on wards.”

In September 2019, it was announced that Patchwork Health was one of twenty health tech companies to be inducted into the fourth cohort of DigitalHealth.London’s accelerator programme.

Dr Nader, NHS doctor and CEO of Patchwork Health, added: “We’re delighted to be partnering with Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust. They share our vision when it comes to improving and modernising NHS clinical staffing. We will be working closely with them to drive up bank fill rates, ensure safe staffing on wards, reduce spend on locum agencies, and offer a better work-life balance to all their clinicians.

“Having lived these problems first hand, we know why innovative solutions are needed to tackle some of the entrenched issues around flexible working in healthcare .”