Diary Cards – Banding Calculation
Information obtained from the study is used with the banding flowchart to calculate the band for the group of doctors. Mostly this is self explanatory, but some points need clarifying:
Weekly Work Hours
If there are diary cards missing from the study, work and duty hours will not be displayed in the comparison table. In this case DRS will estimate average work hours and use this figure the banding calculation. The user should make sure that reasonable diary cards are submitted for every day of the study.
On Call Frequency
The frequency of an on call rota is calculated by comparing the total number of weekdays worked to the number of on call weekdays (1 in 6 etc.). Leave in the monitoring period can cause the figure based on diary cards to be different to the figure based on the pattern and result in a change of banding.
To avoid problems of this nature, the on call frequency used in banding is as follows:
· If a value has been entered, the frequency on the "group details" input screen is always used.
· If there is no specific value and a pattern has been entered, the frequency calculated from the pattern will be used.
· If there is no specific value and no work pattern, then the value calculated from the diary cards will be used.
The frequency calculated from the diary cards is presented in the analysis table even if it is not used in the banding calculation.
Prospective Cover
If prospective cover is defined for the pattern, this fact will be used even if other information is taken from diary cards.
