Staffing scenarios
Primary experiments—baseline staffing levels | |
Standard (core assumption) | Average demand measured by the Safer Nursing Care Tool (SNCT) across 20 days in June* as recommended by the tool guidelines. |
Low | 80% of average demand measured by the SNCT across 20 days in June*. Lower than the standard either due to vacancies or set to provide bare minimum coverage with high use of flexible staffing. |
High | 90th percentile of demand measured by the SNCT across 20 days in June*. Designed to meet demand on most days—it is theoretically enough to meet demand through permanent staff on 90% of days. |
Secondary experiments—flexible staffing options | |
Empirical availability (core assumption) | Redeployments and empirical availability of temporary staff (<50% chance of fulfilled requests for all staff types and times of day). Based on data for temporary staffing request fulfilled for one of the participating hospitals. |
No temporary staff or redeployments | No redeployments and no temporary staff. |
Higher availability | Redeployments and bank/agency staff requests each have 50% chance of being fulfilled. Thus, this assumes higher availability of temporary staff than the core assumption. |
Unlimited availability | Redeployments and bank staff requests each have 50% chance of being fulfilled and agency staff requests have 100% chance of being fulfilled. |
*Or next month if unavailable. Where needed for wards that have no data, for example, in the second half of the year, we applied the average percentage increase/decrease between January and June for other wards at that hospital.