Staff cost per WAU: trust level and individual clinical service lines
Slightly different methodologies are used to calculate all staff cost per WAU (weighted activity unit) metrics at trust level and for individual clinical service lines. Find out more about the WAU and the basic cost per WAU calculation.
What are the differences and why
We use a simple calculation for staff cost per WAU metrics at clinical service line level, using data from ESR (the Electronic Staff Record) for costs:
Where to find trust-level staff cost per WAU metrics
The more complex calculations, which use a combination of annual accounts and ESR data, are used for all staff cost metrics in the Pay section of Operational Productivity.
They also appear in:
- Finance and Use of Resources (Use of Resources)
- Workforce Analysis (Overview)
- Nursing & Midwifery (Trust-level)
- Allied Health Professionals (Money & resources)
- Doctors (Overview)
Check the metric page to see exactly how it’s been calculated.
How we calculate trust-level staff cost per WAU metrics
For all these metrics we factor in Reference Costs as a percentage of operating expenditure (from annual accounts). This is abbreviated to OAF (operating expenditure adjustment factor) in the equations below.
We also apply a Market Forces Factor adjustment throughout.
Deriving costs for each group of substantive staff
We filter the data by ESR occupation code in order to calculate the cost per WAU for different staff groups such as medical, nursing or allied health professionals. We then use the same methodology as for the total substantive staff (above). See the methodology on individual metric pages for the ESR codes used, and get additional information from the NHS occupation code manual.
For staff cost per WAU metrics for individual clinical service lines, we also select the areas of work in ESR.