Staffing agency lead times excluded from surge models

1. System failure identification

   Surge plans assume additional staff can be brought in, without modelling how long that takes. Beds are opened on paper that cannot be staffed for days. The plan fails at execution, when there is no time left to find an alternative.

2. Data pipeline diagnostics

   Capacity planning treats staff as an elastic input available on request. Agency lead time, credentialling, and orientation are real constraints that appear in no capacity model. Lead time is well known operationally and appears in no planning artefact.

3. Predictive computational model

   Model staffed capacity with an explicit lead time per staffing source. Physical beds and staffable beds become separate figures with different time horizons. Separating the two makes the constraint explicit rather than assumed away.

4. Workflow integration

   Publish staffable capacity as the planning figure and physical capacity as the ceiling. Plans built on the ceiling fail at the moment they are executed. Planning against the ceiling guarantees the shortfall appears under load.

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