Tempo

Problem

General practice is under severe and growing strain. Rising demand, increasing complexity, workforce shortages, and fragmented systems have left practices struggling to meet patient needs. Staff spend excessive time on manual rota planning, HR processes, and reconciling workforce and finance data. These administrative burdens reduce time for patient care, increase stress, and drive inefficient use of limited workforce capacity.

At the same time, larger practices and PCNs offer opportunities for scale, but many lack the tools to coordinate teams effectively. Current systems are fragmented across rota tools, HR databases, spreadsheets, and clinical systems, creating duplication, errors, and poor visibility of demand and capacity. This undermines continuity, reduces responsiveness, and leads to unnecessary locum use, financial inefficiencies, and widening gaps between patient demand and available capacity.

Primary care urgently needs a way to operate at scale without losing the strengths of small teams: continuity, responsiveness, and personalised care. Tempo addresses this core system challenge — enabling practices to understand, plan, and optimise their workforce so they can provide sustainable, high-quality care in a complex, fast-changing environment.

Solution

Tempo is a workforce management platform built specifically for primary care. It integrates rota planning, HR, annual leave, finance, demand and capacity modelling, and flexible staffing into one system — replacing multiple disconnected tools and spreadsheets. This gives practices a single source of truth for workforce planning and operational decision-making.

The platform enables strategic and minute‑by‑minute planning of capacity, with appointment‑level insight to match workforce supply to real patient demand. It automates repetitive tasks such as rota creation, leave reconciliation, compliance tracking, and payroll reporting, saving significant administrative time. Staff can request leave, track workload, and collaborate across teams, supporting fairness, transparency, and retention.

Tempo connects operational and clinical leaders by visualising workforce use, gaps, costs, and productivity in real time. This provides practices and PCNs with the tools to redesign services, share staff efficiently, reduce locum expenditure, and plan proactively rather than firefight.

By embedding proven improvement methodologies and population‑health approaches developed at Foundry Healthcare, Tempo supports continuous learning and evolution — enabling practices to deliver more resilient, efficient, and patient‑centred care.

Impact

Operational Efficiency

• Up to 50% reduction in administrative time for rota building, leave management, and payroll reconciliation (Foundry Healthcare)
• 20 hours per week saved for a 30,000‑patient site, equivalent to £20,000 annual efficiency gain (Foundry Healthcare)
• Automation eliminated most manual data entry into clinical systems

Financial Impact

• £41,860 annual saving through reduced flexible/locum staffing, achieved via more effective deployment of salaried clinicians (Foundry Healthcare)
• Improved predictability of workforce costs through integrated rota, HR, and finance data

Service and Patient Benefit

• Improved alignment of capacity with demand, reducing delays and supporting more consistent access (Foundry Healthcare; Charter Medical Centre)
• Enhanced continuity and safer staffing through visibility of skills and availability
• Sustained 4+ star patient ratings at Foundry linked to improved access and stability

Staff Experience

• Fairer, more transparent rotas and clearer workload planning
• Reduced stress and improved team morale due to proactive, data‑driven workforce management