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By James Shields - 27th Oct 2022

Circular Wave are delighted to announce that they have been selected to deploy a new flexible GP staff pool across North Central London Integrated Care System.

This new ICS-wide service will be deployed into over 200 General Practices across five London boroughs of Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey and Islington. It will increase much needed GP capacity and save money for providers whilst improving working conditions and opportunities for local healthcare staff.

The Circular Wave platform will connect all providers across the ICS and facilitate the matching, coordination and payroll of clinical and non-clinical staff working on a flexible basis at Practices, Primary Care Networks and other GP providers.

Control for each place

North Central London Integrated Care System (NEL ICS) covers five London boroughs and a population of 1.5 million people. The deployment of a flexible staff pool follows NHSE’s People Plan commitment to establish GP staff banks and encourage flexible working. Through this, it aims to help increase the capacity and resilience of General Practice across the healthcare system.

NEL ICS specified a comprehensive list of system requirements for the platform. This ranged from Job and Training boards so that Practices can advertise long-term vacancies and staff can book into available training courses to an integrated payment system to ensure financial control and security. Given the large catchments of each borough, the variety of staff requirements and the strength of existing providers already operating at a place-based level, an important system requirement for the flexible staff pool was for each of the five boroughs to retain a level of autonomy.

The service will be configured to manage each borough/place’s requirements so they are able to manage staff at a place level whilst also offering the ability to share staff across boroughs when and as appropriate.

Increasing capacity and saving money

Still prominent in NHSE policy, the flexible staff pool aims to increase much needed capacity and resilience to providers in time for usual winter pressures, flu and Covid-19 vaccinations and record demand for appointments.

It also aims to remove dependency on staff agencies, saving staff and providers money and to offer better working opportunities for healthcare staff who want to work on a flexible basis in each of the five London boroughs.

Efficient and engaging

Everything for staff will be accessed through the Circular Wave mobile app which will become a digital hub for the flexible staff pool and where they will be able to upload their professional documents, view and apply for shifts, complete and submit timesheets and communicate with Practices and colleagues.

For Practices, PCNs and other GP providers across the locality, they will be able to seamlessly release and manage shifts to an engaged and thriving staff pool.

Big milestone for Circular Wave

This is a very significant milestone on Circular Wave's mission to transform staff management in healthcare. By connecting over 200 providers across an entire ICS we will see the at-scale impact of a healthcare system having a workforce system that they can adapt, control and develop for their needs.

The first priority is to help NCL ICS to deploy the most effective and engaging staff pool and to provide the best return on investment, support for Practice and new working opportunities for staff in the five London boroughs.

After that, Circular Wave will build a long-term partnership with all partners in NCL ICS to ensure it can make the continuous improvements in services and workforce that it needs to address its biggest challenges of improving outcomes in population health, tackling inequalities, increasing productivity and supporting social/economic development.

For Circular Wave, more generally, this project is the first system-wide deployment into a healthcare system. Winning this contract shows the ambition of new healthcare systems to value partnerships and services which aim not just to patch over issues but to equip themselves with the tools they need to solve the long-term problems in the NHS.

The flexible staff pool will be live across all GP providers in NCL ICS from December 1st.

For all enquiries or to discuss a flexible staff bank for your place or system [email protected] or call on 0333 987 4045.