Urgent care providers across the UK, are becoming increasingly frustrated with time-consuming and manual processes associated with hiring, onboarding, and credentialing when recruiting clinical professionals. Discover how urgent care provider HUC have automated credentialing, reduced time to hire by 70% and eliminated many frustrations with onboarding.
Urgent care providers across the UK, are becoming increasingly frustrated with time-consuming and manual processes associated with hiring, onboarding, and credentialing when recruiting clinical professionals. There is a clinical workforce shortage of nearly 84,000 FTE staff and even when candidates are available, recruiting clinicians is not a quick and simple task as urgent care providers also need to ensure they’re following the relevant competency, skills and behaviour checks in line with the Integrated Urgent Care Workforce Blueprint
Urgent care provider HUC had identified that there was an increase in demand on time and resources needed to fill vacant roles from applicant processing and tracking to onboarding successful candidates once hired.
“Before we started to use Credentially, we struggled in several areas. It felt like we were constantly chasing references, documentation and applications.”
Deirdre Saliba, Head of HR, Strategy, and In-Sourcing, HUC
Having identified the need to create efficiencies within its hiring, onboarding and credentialing processes and ease the burden placed on staff, HUC approached Credentially and results were quick to follow:
- Average time to hire reduced to 6-7 days, with ongoing realisation of efficiencies anticipated to lead to further improvements.
- 12 hours per week saved on HR monitoring of ongoing compliance.
- Increase in the number of references received back
- Significant reduction in the number of emails and calls back and forth during the hiring process
Automated credentialling
One of the key features that appealed to the recruitment team at HUC was the automation of professional checks, including clinical registers, criminal records, and national body registrations.
“We can see any notifications and updates in real-time, so if someone’s DBS has expired, we know about it. Plus, as Credentially links into the GMC and NMC we can see a live status of clinicians. If someone has been struck off or has a warning we can see it, which is crucial to keeping our patients safe.”
Luisa Gaiteri Clinical Recruiter, HUC
Improving the candidate experience
In addition, digitising data, digitalising processes, automating evidence and tracking in real-time, has improved the onboarding experience for candidates as well as administrators. The HUC recruitment team also found that many GPs are already familiar with the Credentially user interface, having signed up for the NHS Covid Clinical Assessment Service (CCAS) in 2020.
“Credentially has made our processes a lot slicker and drastically reduced the back and forth of emails. It’s really easy for GPs to upload their documents when applying for a role, Credentially has really taken the pressure off and added value to our business.”
Luisa Gaiteri Clinical Recruiter, HUC
Navigating the complexities of IR35
Credentially’s software has also supported HUC to comply with IR35, proactively identifying GPs who operate via their own limited company to ensure they are compliant with the legislation. This is a HR function which has been particularly challenging since the Government reforms in April 2020 which affected the ‘intermediaries’ to non-public sector bodies, such as corporations who provide Out-of-Hours (OOH) Care, Urgent Care and Walk-in Centres.
Using the questionnaire functionality within Credentially HUC created a list of 26 questions based around the information required by HMRC. Within two weeks of distributing the questionnaire, HUC received responses from all relevant clinicians, determining the IR35 status of 230 doctors to submit to HMRC.
One central, feature rich system
“To have one central and secure location to hold all GP staff records and compliance data is invaluable. GPs can use it out of hours, and now our clinical leads are familiar with the system, they know when they see a notification from Credentially that it’s important, so it gets actioned straight away. It also provides us with a complete audit trail, so we can see who has approved what within the system – nothing slips through the net. I would be lost without it.”
Luisa Gaiteri Clinical Recruiter, HUC
About HUC
HUC is a Social Enterprise delivering integrated urgent healthcare services, including, Out of Hours, and NHS 111 services to approximately 3 million people across Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and Bedfordshire.
Founded in 2007, one of the focus areas for HUC is to help reduce unnecessary hospital admissions and to provide care as close to people’s homes as possible. With 27 Primary Care Centres across three counties, HUC also undertake home visits for patients unable to access these centres.
For more information on HUC, visit https://hucweb.co.uk
Discover more about Credentially:
Founded in 2016 by former A&E Doctor, Kit Latham, and Software Engineer, Artem Stalpouski, Credentially is redefining inefficient and costly hiring processes with innovative credentialing software that automates the recruitment, onboarding, and compliance of healthcare workers.
With a focus on candidate experience and organisational efficiencies, Credentially’s mission is to save critical hours for healthcare providers and the NHS. Credentially’s customers take as little as 10 days to sign-up, validate and onboard clinicians compared to an industry average of 128 days.
