NHS trusts lose millions of hours to routine inefficiency

Apogee has published research indicating that NHS organisations lose more than 35 million staff hours a year to routine workplace inefficiencies. The study is based on more than 200 Freedom of Information requests to NHS trusts across the UK.

The report estimates that lost time costs more than GBP £1 billion a year in productivity and links it to everyday delays in system access, document handling and patient communication. It also estimates that around 5 million patient appointments are missed each year, while responding trusts print more than 1.1 billion pages annually.

Staff lose an average of eight minutes a day because of delays in accessing systems, moving information and contacting patients, according to the findings. Spread across a workforce of about 1.2 million patient-facing and administrative staff over 220 working days, those small delays become a significant operational burden.

The methodology was based on 244 submissions generated by two rounds of Freedom of Information requests sent to 203 NHS trusts. The estimate used trust data on login times and document workflows, with an additional allowance for slow applications and interruptions during the working day.

Three pressure points

The report identifies three main sources of lost time. The first is at the start of shifts, when staff face delays logging into systems and accessing devices. Responding trusts reported that workers wait an average of more than 80 seconds to access a usable desktop, with some delays stretching to six minutes.

The second is the movement of information within organisations. Although digitisation is widespread, many workflows still rely on a mix of digital and paper processes, creating duplication and extra administrative work. Responding trusts recorded annual printing volumes of more than 1.1 billion pages.

The third is communication with patients. NHS organisations still have limited visibility into the causes of missed appointments, the report says, making it harder to judge how far communication problems contribute to non-attendance.

Apogee argues that these issues point to a wider productivity gap in the health service, where digital systems have been introduced but do not consistently save time for frontline staff. It also argues that many trusts cannot measure the duration of key processes well enough to identify where delays occur.

The findings come amid wider pressure on the NHS to improve efficiency and raise productivity. The research presents routine operational friction as being at odds with the productivity gains expected across the service.

James Clark, Chief Executive Officer of Apogee, said: "We often talk about productivity in the NHS in terms of large-scale transformation programmes, but our research shows that a significant amount of time is still being lost in the small, everyday moments of friction that happen thousands of times a day."

"What's striking is that this isn't about a lack of technology. In most cases, systems are already in place, but they don't work together effectively. Organisations have digitised processes, but not always simplified them - paper became PDF, but the underlying inefficiencies remain.

"The opportunity is to focus on how work actually happens in practice: how staff access systems, how information flows, and how patients are reached. When those processes and experiences are genuinely streamlined and friction-free, that's when meaningful time can be returned to frontline care."

The report says even modest changes could make a material difference to capacity. It estimates that cutting day-to-day friction by 25% would return about GBP £250 million in staff time to frontline services each year.

Apogee recommends that trusts identify where time is being lost, remove unnecessary steps and delays, and redirect the recovered time to patient care. The company works with 47 NHS trusts and focuses on document management, digital workplace systems and communications processes.

The productivity estimate was calculated using a blended hourly cost of GBP £30, based on NHS earnings data and standard overhead assumptions. On that basis, the report puts the annual loss at about GBP £1.06 billion.