A Luton company is helping Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust recruit locum doctors more cost effectively.
Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust has become the first NHS Trust in England to target improvements and cost savings in its use of medical locums, through a managed service from Comensura.
Comensura, based at Capability Green, is a labour supply management specialist, it manages an extensive supply chain of recruitment agencies tasked with sourcing medical locums for the Trust.
The Three year contract, awarded via the NHS NEOCPC framework, provides Harrogate with a single point of access for all medical locums, rather than managing multiple recruitment agency supply chain relationships.
Jamie Horton, managing director of Comensura, said: “We are delighted to have been appointed as the managed service provider to Harrogate.
“This is our first clinical customer in the NHS and to support them, we have made significant investment in new team members in both account management and customer service roles.
“This contract award is a significant development for Comensura and supports our strategy to move into new markets.”
Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust hope to reduce the £2.8 million spent on medical staff in 2013/14.
Before the contract with Comensura, clinical directorates had limited access to information to allow them to manage the demand for temporary medical staff.
Comensura’s service helps to ensure that medical locums are professionally sourced to the right standard and at the right price.
The Trust expects to optimise what it pays for valuable medical locum resources, while ensuring accurate sourcing of the right skills against its requirements.
It also wants to reduce the internal burdens of finding suitable providers, negotiating prices and terms and managing relationships.
Comensura has implemented its c.net marketplace management technology to capture all orders and payment processes for medical locums.
Polly McMeekin, deputy director of Workforce and Organisational Development at Harrogate NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Sourcing medical locums is a major challenge for the NHS generally, due to the high level of demand and complexity involved in managing contracts with multiple recruitment agencies.
“But with Comensura we are attracting locums from a broader range of agencies which is ensuring high quality.
“We are also achieving good financial savings and receiving significantly improved management information to help us plan for the future.”