When there is a lack of staff in healthcare, short-term measures are often taken that are expensive and lead to inefficient use of resources. Internal staff pools are so far relatively rare in Swedish healthcare, but they have the potential to improve the capacity and quality of care. Now, research from Chalmers points to both opportunities and obstacles when it comes to introducing pooling.
Pooling involves allocating staff capacity that can be moved to those parts of the organization where there is currently a shortage of staff, for example due to illness or that the demand for a certain type of care is high. This way of remedying bottlenecks has not been used systematically to any great extent in Sweden. There are however exceptions. One example is the Staffing Service unit at Sahlgrenska University Hospital, which works with pooling of staff, mainly when it comes to nurses and assistant nurses.
The research on this method of allocating staff in a proactive way, instead of being forced to react in order to deal with a shortage situation, has not been very comprehensive. But now researchers from Chalmers, among others, have shed scientific light on the issue.
Some of the researchers' conclusions:
- Internal staff pools have great potential for improving healthcare capacity. Variations in the capacity of different care units will to some extent cancel each other out, which means long-term benefits for all units participating in the pool.
- The benefits for caregivers are a better overview of available capacity and potentially improved work environment.
- For care recipients and patients, pooling can mean shorter queues, increased service levels and increased patient safety.
- In healthcare, there are some practical obstacles to pooling that need to be addressed, including recruitment, community view, and specialization.
– Our most important lesson from this study so far is that there is a lot of potential in this area. Staff pools can allow operations to plan smarter and thus become more efficient. One can compare it to a stock portfolio, where some stocks go down and others go up. With a staff pool, you simply spread the risks and get an increased level of service with an already existing staff, says one of the researchers behind the study, Björn Lantz, Professor in Operations Management at the Department of Technology Management and Economics at Chalmers, in an interview in the magazine Sjukhusläkaren (in Swedish).
The study
The scientific article Staff pooling in healthcare systems – results from a mixed-methods study explores the possibilities and obstacles to pooling. The study was published in Health systems in August 2022.
- Professor, Innovation and R&D Management, Technology Management and Economics
- Doctoral Student, Innovation and R&D Management, Technology Management and Economics