We understand your challenges

There are systems available to help you roster your staff and then react to issues on the day, but we believe there is a gap at the very beginning of the staffing process – in planning and standardising what you need, appraising care levels across the week, and identifying where you can make savings safely – whether you’re an NHS trust, hospice or private provider.

We recognise the challenge that lies in balancing budgets with safe staffing, and designed Establishment Genie to help you navigate this as a team, understand how competing priorities interact, and make informed decisions underpinned with detailed data and reports.

Take stock of your staffing, compare care levels and costs within your organisation and with peers, and remodel for safe, affordable care – backed up by comprehensive, automated reporting.

"As a Trust we have welcomed the introduction of Establishment Genie. The tool has enabled us to engage with our ward managers and matrons directly in the review and later setting of establishments. This work has reinforced some of our thoughts and challenged us in other areas, allowing benchmarking of specialties and divisions, taking away the hours of hard work, simplifying the mystique and enabling clear reporting to our own Trust and external partners. Thank you.“ – Vanessa Sloane, Director of Nursing, Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust.

Assure your care levels and deliver savings safely

The Genie is an easy, online tool that helps senior nurses and midwives, in partnership with their finance, HR and operational colleagues, to review, compare, remodel and report their establishments.

Evaluate your establishments and remodel to improve safety or cost
Deliver cost reduction safely and articulate the relationship between budgets and care levels
Identify the exact WTE requirement and uplift for each ward and compare this to the budget

Prepare for, or respond to, inspections by the CQC and other regulators
Overlay staffing levels with quality indicators to explore trends between staffing and outcomes
Explore better, cheaper ways of meeting fluctuations in demand, bed numbers and patient mix

Save time and improve the quality of your monthly and six- monthly safe staffing reports
Demonstrate compliance with recommendations from the Francis Inquiry, Carter Review and the NQB
Model the workforce for new roles (e.g. Band 4 Nursing Associates), mergers or reconfiguration of services

The Genie drives workforce planning in line with the Francis recommendations, highlights unwarranted variation in response to the Carter review, and supports the National Quality Board’s directive that workforce planning should be based on ‘collaborative decision making between clinical and managerial staff, reporting to boards.’

Try the Genie for free

See how it can work for you – contact us for a free diagnostic review that is yours to keep with no obligation. We’ll work with three of your wards (or for hospices, your entire organisation) in just one day and show you the difference Establishment Genie can make.

"It was easy to review our staffing using the Genie and the reports give real insight. I can really see how it can help our hospice plan and budget for the care we need to deliver." – Maddy Bass, Head of Nursing and Quality, St John’s Hospice, Lancaster.

About Us

Creative Lighthouse Ltd (CLL), the makers of Establishment Genie, supports senior nurses, midwives and their colleagues to review, plan and budget for safe, affordable nurse and midwifery staffing – that’s all we do.

CLL was founded by Richard Cooper and Eve Mitchell – former NHS managers with a specialism and focus on helping professional leads articulate the staffing their wards need to be effective and safe. Collectively, we’ve worked in partnership with senior staff from ward to board across dozens of healthcare providers in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. We ground our work in our broad spectrum of experience gained from delivering wider healthcare improvement since the early 2000s.

Our objective is to empower and complement professional judgement in decision making and budgeting. We do this by providing clear metrics, benchmarking and reporting to describe the care levels and cost of current or alternative establishments. We distilled our experience of what providers find helpful into an automated, self-service online tool – the Establishment Genie.

We are committed to making a positive contribution to healthcare and we’re grateful to those we work with along the way. In recognition of the often superhuman service that nurses, midwives and healthcare assistants provide, we have pledged to donate 2.5% of our annual profits to the Cavell Nurses Trust. See their work here: www.cavellnursestrust.org

"Establishment Genie has made a difference to morale already in the high level findings. You made the whole process achievable and interesting. The Genie is FAB!! Thank you." – Fiona Blackwell, Divisional Nurse Director, Medicine, Wye Valley NHS Trust.

What is it?

Establishment Genie is an easy, online tool that helps senior nurses and midwives, in partnership with their non-clinical colleagues, to review, compare, remodel and report their establishments.

It articulates the case for safe staffing, provides evidence to support professional judgement, and helps you balance your budget.

It drives workforce planning in line with the Francis recommendations, highlights unwarranted variation in response to the Carter review, and helps trusts to deliver their savings plans safely.

It generates automatic reports to meet the monthly and six-monthly requirements, saving significant time and giving detailed ward staffing information that you can compare within your hospital and with other Establishment Genie trusts.

There are systems available to help you roster your staff and then react to pressures on the day. We believe there is a gap at the very beginning of the staffing process – in planning and standardising what you need, demonstrating whether it is safe across the week, and defining what it will cost. Establishment Genie walks you through simple but robust planning, to review and develop consistent care that is aligned to budgets.

Simply put, the Genie helps you build fair, safe and affordable establishments.

Why use it?

Take stock of your establishments and remodel to improve safety or cost
Deliver cost reduction safely and articulate the relationship between budgets and care levels
Identify the exact WTE requirement and uplift for each ward and compare this to the budget

Prepare for, or respond to, inspections by the CQC and other regulators
Overlay staffing levels with quality indicators to explore trends between staffing and outcomes
Explore better, cheaper ways of meeting fluctuations in demand, bed numbers and patient mix

Save time and improve the quality of your monthly and six-monthly safe staffing reports
Demonstrate compliance with recommendations from the Francis Inquiry, Carter Review and the NQB
Model the workforce for new roles (e.g. Band 4 Nursing Associates), mergers or reconfiguration of services

How does it work?

The tool guides the user – typically a senior nurse or midwife – through easy to use screens, and it takes just 20-30 minutes to enter the simple information for a typical ward – things like shift timings, beds, budgets and spend on bank and agency. Once the data is entered, the team is ready to:

Review the current WTE requirement, uplift, position against budget and the use of bank, agency and specials, alongside detailed staffing metrics that show planned care levels at 8-hourly intervals day and night, weekday and weekend. Exceptions against any care standards set by the trust are flagged for attention.

Compare the ward with other wards in your hospital, or at other Establishment Genie trusts, on staffing metrics. You can overlay this with outcomes for patients (e.g. from the safety thermometer), staff (e.g. vacancy and turnover) and operational outcomes (e.g. delayed transfers).

Remodel to address any areas of concern around safety and quality, for lower costs and cheaper ways of meeting demand (e.g. more cost effective resourcing of specialling, explore the effect of new roles), or to meet changes in activity or restructuring.

Report, using summary and detailed automated PDF reports that allow you to add commentary to express issues, explain decisions, articulate risks and describe action plans. The reports are also designed to automate the production of the mandatory monthly and six-monthly safe staffing report, which saves senior staff time and gives a high quality output.