Trends, variations, and prediction of staff sickness absence rates among NHS ambulance services in England: a time series study

PARESH WANKHADE, Zahid Asghar*, Niro Siriwardena, Viet_Hai Phung, Fiona Bell, Kelly Hird, Kristy Sanderson

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (journal)peer-review

8 Citations (Scopus)
179 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Objectives
Our aim was to measure ambulance sickness absence rates over time, comparing ambulance services and investigate the predictability of rates for future forecasting.

Setting
All English Ambulance Services, UK.
Design
We used a time series design analysing published monthly NHS staff sickness rates by gender, age, job role and region, comparing the ten regional ambulance services in England between 2009 and 2018. Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) and Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) models were developed using Stata v14.2 and trends displayed graphically.
Participants
Individual participant data was not available. The total number of Full Time Equivalent (FTE) days lost due to sickness absence (including non-working days) and total number of days available for work for each staff group and level were available. In line with The Data Protection Act, if the organization had less than 330 FTE days available during the study period it was censored for analysis.

Results
A total of 1117 months of sickness absence rate data for all English ambulance services were included in the analysis. We found considerable variation in annual sickness absence rates between ambulance services and over the 10-year duration of the study in England. Across all the ambulance services the median days available were 1,336,888 with inter quartile range (IQR) of 54,8796 and 73,346 median days lost due to sickness absence, with IQR of 30,551 days. Amongst clinical staff sickness absence varied seasonally with peaks in winter and falls over summer. The winter increases in sickness absence were largely predictable using seasonally adjusted (SARIMA) time series models.

Conclusion
Sickness rates for clinical staff were found to vary considerably over time and by ambulance trust. Statistical models had sufficient predictive capability to help forecast sickness absence, enabling services to plan human resources more effectively at times of increased demand.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere053885
Pages (from-to)e053885
Number of pages10
JournalBMJ Open
Volume11
Issue number9
Early online date29 Sept 2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 29 Sept 2021

Keywords

  • sickness absence
  • ambulance services
  • NHS Ambulance Service
  • ARIMA
  • SARIMA
  • Seasonality
  • Predictive Value of Tests

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