Hospitals urged to sign up to passport agreements

NHS England has announced that staff will be able to move seamlessly between sites in a bid to make it easier to take on new roles, plug gaps in staffing and improve patients’ care.

All hospitals in England are being encouraged to sign-up to passporting agreements, which will cut the need for up to two-day inductions and other admin when staff move between organisations. This means that workers with these agreements will be able to move across different NHS sites to offer care to patients before returning to their main trust.

Alongside passporting, Prerana Issar, Chief People Officer for NHS England and NHS Improvement, is confirming that £7 million is to be put into local services to support the nationwide introduction of e-rostering, allowing staff to plan patient care rotas months ahead. Such an expansion of flexible work plans follows moves which have helped retain more than 1,000 nurses, midwives and other clinicians over the last 18 months through a ‘retention programme’ in NHS trusts, which is now also being rolled out across GP surgeries.

Prerana Issar said: “This shows we are delivering on our Long Term Plan promises to improve flexible working for staff and ensuring the right clinician is available for patients. By making unwieldy paper staff schedules a thing of the past and introducing passporting, we are supporting our world-class staff so they can not only continue to give patients brilliant care, but further build their careers as they do so.”

Supporting the deployment of staff across a number of different NHS sites through passporting has already been trialled successfully at five hospitals across London. Staff at these trusts have reported an increase in more flexible working patterns and improved ability to share experiences and knowledge between services.

These workforce sharing agreements encourage host organisations to recognise that employment checks and core training have been undertaken at the employing organisation. The ‘e-rosters’ which are already in use in some trusts around the country, can be set at a click of a button, saving hours of NHS staff time that can instead be used for face to face patient time.