Case Study: Royal Surrey County Hospital reduces agency spend with NHS Employers' collaborative mobile app

Reducing agency spend through a collaborative mobile app

Royal Surrey County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, working with NHS Employers, faced significant workforce gaps and high agency costs, spending £16.8 million on agency staff in 2014/15. In some periods, the trust was only filling a small number of vacant shifts with internal staff, making it difficult to manage demand efficiently across departments.

NHS Employers supported the rollout of Locum’s Nest, a collaborative mobile app that lets clinicians view and apply for available shifts directly, helping the trust fill rota gaps with bank staff instead of agency workers. The app was launched at Royal Surrey and later expanded across departments and into a collaboration with Ashford and St Peter’s Hospitals; over 3,000 clinicians subscribed, more than 6,000 shifts were filled, around £150,000 was saved at Ashford and St Peter’s, and shift attendance rates reached 100%.

Royal Surrey County Hospital