NHS Digital Staff Passport in development

The NHSE Enabling Staff Movement team are developing the next version of NHS Digital Staff Passport, which will focus on two use cases; the movement of Postgraduate Doctors in Training and NHS employees moving between NHS trusts on a temporary basis.

What is the NHS Digital Staff Passport?

An easy-to-use service that holds staff members’ essential information – including personal, employment (excluding pay), skills and occupational health. So, when they want to move between NHS trusts, they can quickly and securely transfer the information that’s required, without duplicate form filling, checks and training. The NHS Digital Staff Passport can be accessed by all NHS staff who are involved in the process of staff moving between NHS trusts. This makes the whole experience easier, faster and less repetitive to get NHS staff onboarded at their new trust.

The long-term goal is that every staff member in the NHS will hold an NHS Digital Staff Passport, to support them in their NHS employment to facilitate a wider range of staff movements. The first phase will include the movement of postgraduate doctors and staff that move on a temporary basis. Those staff members within NHS trusts who are responsible for onboarding staff will also be immediate end-users of the system and will realise the benefit to their internal processes. The NHS Digital Staff Passport is to be used for NHS to NHS staff movements, it does not include movement outside of the NHS for example primary care, social care or private healthcare, it is our ambition that in the future it will enable wider movement across to wider health and social care sectors.

There are a number of other projects underway such as Provisioning And Systems Access (PASA), Collaborative Bank and Core Skills Training Framework review that compliments the use of the passport. The NHS Digital Staff Passport programme is fully aligned to and is in collaboration with these projects.

What are the benefits?

We have already seen the benefits from the COVID-19 Digital Staff Passport, and the next version of the NHS Digital Staff Passport will bring a great many further benefits including increases in data items available for transfer and technical functionality to create greater efficiencies. Key benefits to be achieved are:

For users:

  • Take control – Staff can hold their own personal, employment, statutory and mandatory training, and occupational health information securely on their smartphones.
  • Save time and effort – Staff can securely transfer their information to any NHS trust without completing duplicate forms, or repeating checks and training.
  • Be empowered – Staff can move around the NHS more easily – enabling enhancing of skills and experience in the way that’s right for them and their career.
  • Improve patient care – Staff can transfer their information quickly and begin delivering care as soon as possible without admin delays.
  • Feel secure – All the controls and checks are in place behind the scenes so staff can rest easy knowing their information is safe and accurate at all times.

For trusts:

  • Better staff experiences – Speed and simplicity improves the onboarding experience for both staff and HR – helping increase job satisfaction, wellbeing and retention.
  • Improved response – NHS trusts are empowered to quickly get staff to where they need to be to support patients.
  • Save time and effort – Spend less time repeating recruitment checks and verifying training requirements – removing barriers and inefficiencies.
  • Reduce costs – Enabling staff to get to work more quickly means less dependency on agency backfill and easier rota management.
  • Reduce risk – Consistent and robust checking of information improves safeguarding for both staff and patients.
  • Single view – Bringing together staff information from multiple workforce systems to create a trustworthy single source.

Who will be using it?

  • NHS trusts corporate teams (HR, Recruitment, Training and Occupational Heath)
  • Postgraduate doctors when they rotate
  • Staff moving on a temporary basis to work at a different NHS trust

When will it be available?

  • Initial pilot targeted from September 2023 - March 2024
  • Roll out pilot targeted from April 2024
  • Live service targeted from August 2025

Want to get involved?

If you are a Postgraduate Doctor or an NHS employee temporarily working in another NHS trust under an honorary contract or secondment, we are looking to hear from you. The NHS Digital Staff Passport team run a monthly user group to share product development ideas, share prototype designs and is an opportunity for you to provide feedback. To request an invite to the user group, please email england.digitalstaffpassport@nhs.net.