Benefits

Positive Outcomes with MAPS Health Suite

For the healthcare providers that use the MAPS Health Suite, numerous operational benefits are enjoyed. These include:

• Improved patient care - matching the deployment of staff to patient demand, and ensuring the right skills are in the right place at the right time, directly improves quality of care.

"The biggest benefit is in allowing managers who are setting schedules to properly understand the impacts upon care delivery and potential impacts on costs at a unit level." Richard Taylor, Services Delivery Director, Sandwell Mental Health NHS Trust.

• Better use of staff – increasing nurse efficiency by ensuring staff hours are only used where needed.

From a nursing perspective, Cathy Dennis, Nursing Recruitment and Retention Manager at Ashford & St Peters NHS Trust explains:

"The business case [for using MAPS] was founded on better utilizing existing staff hours; reducing temporary staffing demand; making overall savings for the organization and clinical governance issues. We can now get the right staff in the right place at the right time."

• Better management of staffing costs – better utilizing existing staff to reduce costs and help keep within budgets.

"Managers are actually managing their own budgets, while staff at unit level have access to information first hand, rather than retrospectively." Cathy Dennis, Nursing Recruitment and Retention Manager, Ashford & St Peters NHS Trust

• Reduced administration - automating both the scheduling and payroll processes to dramatically reduce administration overheads.

"Very early on it had reduced time drastically, time spend on schedules went down from a weeks work to 4-5 hours. I've got 2 favorite features: Employee Online which I really like, it’s taken away a lot of time inputting people’s requests and annual leave…but the best part for me has been the rollout of unsocial hours going through ESR [the NHS payroll system], it has dramatically reduced time and paperwork, I have gone from repeating myself from 3 separate bits of paper to a click of a button and it all being there."
Natasha Day, Ward Sister, SHDU, Ashford & St Peters NHS Trust

• Improve fairness and equitably - treating staff working preferences objectively and managing schedule requests more effectively.

"The single biggest impact that the implementation of MAPS Healthroster has had in clinical areas is really around equity and fairness of scheduling; it's taken out the emotional blackmail aspect."
Dawn Shubert, Senior HR advisor, Isle of Wight NHS

• Stronger analysis – MAPS Healthroster provides analytical information across the organization. From measuring success against Key Performance Indicators (such as a reduction in sickness) to service level reporting, managers and executives are provided with a powerful dashboard to view and fix issues.

As Keith Mansfield, Finance Director at Ashford & St Peters NHS Trust explains:
"We’ve got much better information for the operational managers as well, the people above the unit charge nurse; the department manager and the general unit manager - much better information on a weekly and daily basis."