Interim COVID-19 Digital Staff Passport enables rapid, temporary staff movement between NHS organisations
Background
The South Yorkshire (SY) Integrated Care System (ICS) serves a population of 1.5 million, and includes 72,000 members of staff.
Committed to developing services and meeting service performance standards the ICS sought tools to help them achieve workforce deployment goals.
Situation
To support the NHS in responding to the pandemic, the Enabling Staff Movement programme at NHS England, in partnership with Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and technology partners, designed, built, tested and rolled out the interim version of the NHS Digital Staff Passport. Development involved testing new technologies and challenging ways of working; whilst keeping user and service needs at its core.
The COVID-19 Digital Staff Passport was designed to support the movement of staff across NHS organisations, to ease administrative burden, eliminate duplication and save time
Aspiration
The height of the pandemic presented an urgent need to accelerate the implementation of the COVID-19 Digital Staff Passport, in order to temporarily move staff to support clinical networks, upskill staff and support the regional vaccinations programme.
Solution and impact
The COVID-19 Digital Staff Passport allows staff to hold their own verified record (issued by their current employer) consisting of their personal information, key information about current role and employment checks that have been completed. These are listed in the ‘credential’ feature on the secure smartphone app.
The SY ICS started using the COVID-19 Digital Staff Passport at Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust (SCH) and Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. It was then rolled out to the vaccination programme at the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (STH) and SCH, and later adopted across the ICS to support any temporary staff moves.
The ICS reported implementation of the COVID-19 Digital Staff Passport system enabled rapid reduction in the time taken to deploy staff from 1-3 weeks to 1-2 days.
The system enabled the ICS to:
- Eliminate the need for honorary contracts, secondment agreements or letters of access/authority.
- Eliminate the need to request or respond to employment check data requests when releasing or receiving staff temporarily.
- Eliminate the need to repeat employment checks.
- Speed up onboarding process for HR teams and staff.
- Deliver rapid, safe and secure staff movement to respond to clinical need.
- Release and receive skilled staff quickly, reducing agency spend and improving patient care.
Functionality
- Staff can hold their own staff record consisting of their personal information, current employment information and employment checks.
- The COVID-19 Digital Staff Passport uses decentralised cloud based technology and a digital wallet allowing information to be held securely by the staff member on their mobile app.
Capabilities
The interim COVID-19 Digital Staff Passport is a short term minimal viable product (MVP) built to support the movement of staff during the COVID-19 pandemic and recovery of service.
The COVID-19 Digital Staff passport is a simple, user-friendly solution giving staff control over their data.
The interim COVID-19 Digital Staff Passport is available now to support the movement of staff between registered NHS organisations. It is unable to support the movement of staff into other sectors such as social care or primary care.
For the product to work across the whole ICS, the registration process must be completed by all NHS provider organisations.
A range of support resources and webinars delivered by the national team are available. Once registered, the system is very simple to use.
Scope of capacity
This interim COVID-19 Digital Staff Passport will be upgraded to the next version of the solution, the NHS Digital Staff Passport, which is now under development and targeted for release into pilot in Spring 2023.
The new NHS Digital Staff Passport will deliver a dynamic product initially focused on supporting the rotation of postgraduate doctors and temporary movement of staff and will feature an easy-to-use portal and digital wallet to hold essential staff information.
It will better enable staff movement between NHS organisations, through quick and secure transfer of personal and employment data and core skills evidence, without duplicated forms, checks and training.
The outcome is a more agile, responsive workforce, allowing staff to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time supporting patient care.
A number of trusts within the SY ICS are planning to participate in the pilot for the new product, due to start in Spring 2023.
Key learning points
Support material: The passport was developed at pace due to the pandemic therefore support material for users was limited. During the first phase of implementation we learnt what support users required and produced a suite of materials to support further waves.
User involvement: During beta we also learnt how important it is to involve users in evolving the product and service. We involved users in product design sessions so they could specify their needs and help us build the product and service to meet them. All future products have a strong emphasis on involving users at all stages.
Identify the drivers: We initially focused on getting organisations successfully registered and trained in the product but struggled to get usage of the passport. This led to a slow registration process and very limited usage of the product. We changed our approach and placed product awareness and identifying use cases to support staff movement at the start of the process. This resulted in organisations registering quicker and an increase in usages of the passport.
Digital equalities
The solution has been built with an alternative paper-based passport for to allow staff who are unable to use the technology to benefit from the solution.
Key figures/ quotes
Users of the system said:
Having a nationally developed and supported system that enables a system to safely deploy staff has really enable us to mobilise our workforce across the ICS, it has saved significant time for our HR staff, has greatly improved the experience of our staff and ultimately is enabling us to deliver the care to our patients
said Jill Quince, Recruitment and Workforce Manager for the SYB Vaccination Programme.
The passport enabled us to quickly transfer people from different Trusts to our own to work within an urgent critical care function. This took away a large administrative burden and allowed us to focus on helping to move the people across to deliver services to patients instead
said Catriona Collins, Head of People Resourcing at Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust.
Find out more
Find out more about the next version of the NHS Digital Staff Passport.
Key contact
Angie Price, Enabling Staff Movement Lead, South Yorkshire ICB
angieprice@nhs.net
COVID-19 Digital Staff Passport Team, NHS England
england.digitalstaffpassport@nhs.net
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Disclaimer
These case studies summarise user and patient experiences with digital solutions along the relevant care pathway. Unless expressly stated otherwise, the apps and digital tools referenced are not supplied, distributed or endorsed by NHS England or the Department of Health and Social Care and such parties are not liable for any injury, loss or damage arising from their use.
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Page last updated: October 2022