An Automated Costing Model

for NHS Finance

County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, North East and Yorkshire, Acute and Community Integrated Trust

The problem

The Finance Community needs to develop a standard and streamlined costing tool, updated centrally and pushed to all organisations because otherwise there will be a huge duplication of effort within finance teams, the length and breadth of the country, each creating their own internal models after every update in pay scales or technical guidance. Developed centrally, this allows the opportunity for both consistency, simplification and the opportunity to develop and enhance, utlising our combined and considerable knowledge base.

The challenge

How might we develop this automated costing tool so that it becomes a valuable and accurate resource, used cross organisationally by finance and non finance staff alike. I wanted this to be a tool that could be used by finance staff (To improve efficiency and consistency of output) but also to make this sufficiently intuitive that non finance staff understood and could use the model – the intention being the time saved could be reinvested into other value adding work areas.

The outputs

The tangible product which came from the innovation is a published Automated Costing Model available via the Value Maker Network. Alternatively, this is available via https://www.facebook.com/groups/valuemaker

The outcomes

The Costing Model continues to be a valuable tool across the NHS – whereby organisations are aware of its existence. Despite being relative quiet over the last 12 months due to COVID related work pressures – it is encouraging the number of emails / chat messages received asking if an updated version is available or when the next planned update will be. Benefits arising from the development are;

Time Savings
Consistency / Accuracy
A Single National Model (Developed and continuing to be adopted

The Innovation

Read the full innovation on the automated Costing Model for NHS Finance

All the documents and resources relating to this innovation can be found in the downloads section at the bottom of the page.

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What the peer-reviewers said

“The model itself is easy to use and gives a very good and quick estimate for ad hoc staff costing needs. The options available to cover the different pay structures for medical staff are thorough and accurately represent the elements that significantly contribute to staff costs. The job of updating payscales is one repeated across the entire NHS so trusting one source to get it right so the job isn’t duplicated is a success of its own.”

“The costing model is a fantastic example of providing a quick calculator for ad hoc staff costs and should be the go-to calculator for the NHS.”

“The costing model itself is highly comprehensive and is flexible enough for different scenarios. Allows for multiple posts to be costed at the same time.”

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