NHS managers said they spend seven to eight hours a day on admin.
A survey has found that nurse managers are wasting hours of their day on time-consuming admins and bureaucracy.
Research by the healthcare app Florence found that a massive 20% of NHS and social care managers said that they spend seven to eight hours a day on admin, with many also saying they “wasted” more than 20 hours a week on bureaucracy.
Four in ten (45%) said the time spent on admin is impacting service users’ health or care and 6% said it has even cost lives.
More than a third (35%) felt that time is wasted due to outdated technology and working methods.
The administrative tasks reported to be taking up the most time included rota scheduling (43%), documentation and record-keeping (30%), and speaking to agencies to secure cover staff (21%).
Overworked and understaffed.
Florence also reported that a shortage of staff is another major issue with one in six (17%) NHS and social care managers responding that their service needs at least 50% more staff to operate properly.
More than a quarter (27%) said they are “overworked and understaffed”.
Dr. Charles Armitage, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Florence, commented, “With care services under such a persistent level of pressure due to patient numbers and a lack of budget, we need to be smarter with how we utilise our healthcare workers’ time.
“Technological solutions are the future in this respect; the technology we have at Florence can reduce a vast proportion of the time spent by healthcare workers on administration, especially regarding staffing. But that must come alongside increased funding from the Government.
“Additional funding and the use of tech is a clear solution to some of the administrative difficulties the industry is currently facing. Once those are addressed, the road ahead will look much clearer.”
