4th December 2023
Over 20 million people in the UK have an MSK condition, which ranges from minor injuries to long term conditions. MSK conditions can affect your bones, joints, muscles, tendons, and the spine and are a leading cause of pain and disability which affects quality of life and independence.
Birmingham and Solihull (BSOL) Integrated Care System understand that effective workforce planning is vital to ensure that the right staff, with the right skills are available to deliver safe, high-quality care to patients and service users. Creating an effective workforce requires an evidence-based workforce plan.
The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust commissioned the NHS Transformation Unit, to develop the MSK Workforce Transformation Plan, on behalf of all BSOL Integrated Care System partners.
We used our workforce expertise to support BSOL MSK Transformation programme to develop the MSK Workforce Transformation Plan. The main benefit of this work was to ensure the MSK workforce can meet the needs of the local population now and in the future.
The Challenge
The BSOL MSK Transformation programme has been established since 2021, and there is a specific workstream in the programme that considers workforce. The need was identified to create a workforce transformation plan with the specific purpose of describing how BSOL will:
- Manage future workforce supply; how we will attract, recruit, and retain sufficient workforce numbers
- Identify new roles and skills requiring investment
- Create new ways of working to support integrated care and equity of access
- Upskill through learning and development to build a sustainable workforce model
- Have the leadership to drive and support this workforce transformation
The workforce plan also needed to optimise the workforce resource across the ICS.
Our Approach
To develop the MSK Workforce Transformation Plan, we followed our workforce planning approach. Our approach combines engagement, analytics, and place-based logic techniques. Our methodology aligns to CIPD’s 6 step workforce planning methodology and Skills for Health’s Six Steps Methodology to Integrated Workforce Planning.
We outlined the numbers, skills, values, and behaviours needed to deliver the MSK pathway. We also described the steps needed to ensure the workforce was in the right place, at the right time, and for the right cost.
The Outcome
We produced a comprehensive MSK Workforce Transformation Plan. This outlined the strategic context and described our approach. We profiled the existing workforce to establish the current position in terms of skills and location and we conducted a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis. Finally, we considered the future requirements including vision and design principles, and outlined the steps BSOL ICS needed to take to have a MSK workforce which meets the needs of the local population. This included:
- Identifying future workforce supply requirements
- Defining the required investment in new roles and skills
- Identifying new ways of working to support integrated care and equity of access
- Upskilling through learning and development to build a sustainable workforce model
- Having the leadership to drive and support this workforce transformation.