National Transport and Logistics Resource Planning Department
The department is a small function within the NHSBT transport operation.
It consists of two staff and its main objective is to ensure that,"we have the correct transport resources, in the correct places at the correct times".
In order to do this it is necessary to agree the definition and level of service with the customer and how it will be measured and reviewed. Once the service has been agreed we look at the options available to cover it and based on the cost and service we agree the optimum solution from the most effective and efficient perspective.
We deal with all transport and logistics requirements within the NHSBT this can range from the very day such as session collections to the more infrequent such as movement of West Nile check samples to the USA.
Some of the recent work we have been involved in, is, working with the British Bone Marrow Register to implement a new transport provider, involved in the tender process for the supply of a transport facilitator for UK Transplant, producing a transport plan for the NBS testing and assessment facility, producing the transport input for the NBS blood shortage policy and many more than this short piece will allow us to expand on.
As over fifty per cent of the movements done by transport are hospital deliveries, looking at the service takes up a great deal of resource planning´s time. A lot of work is done on reviewing supply to hospitals, this is different to the work done by the Blood Stocks Management Scheme which looks at product type and usage, we focus on demand for deliveries and their timings and resource implications.
To enable us to do this we use a large variety of tools the major ones are, centre rotas and Pulse reports.
Each NBS centre has its own transport department and vehicles and drivers and in conjunction with the centres transport team we define the weekly working rota for these drivers and vehicles based upon customer requirements from data supplied by Pulse.We also review delivery patterns and suggest changes to the local transport, Issue and Hospital Liaison functions so that they an discuss with the hospitals concerned. If a hospital requests a change to its delivery service we look at it and suggest the options available.
From weekly Pulse reports we look at demand for our services from hospitals both on a national and local level and these findings form the basis for transports strategy to improve the service to the hospitals.
As demand for our transport services out strips our NBS transport resources at certain times we use couriers and resource planning has responsibility for the national management of any NHSBT couriers, this requires again definition of service, controlling of costs and involvement in the quality aspect of service requirement and SOPs and complaints system and rectification´s to the complaints.
With all the involvement with different functions, both internal and external to the NHSBT, and the vast quantity of data we receive, we are in the best position to produce and analyse most data on transport issues and through this we produce data on service and manage databases. We review weekly delivery demand by every hospital and by delivery type to enable us to work on service levels aimed at reducing ad hoc demand and moving towards planned demand. We also monitor performance on emergency deliveries and investigate them any time we fail to achieve our required service level of 100%. We also control the hospital transport data base which shows all hospitals and their agreed routine deliveries and times and costs and travel times which is used each year when producing national agreements with hospitals.
Hopefully this short piece of work has given you more knowledge about an NHSBT function which you are unlikely to have direct contact with but which is involved in defining and supplying a service to you 365 days a year.
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