Firstcall Healthcare Services

Firstcall Healthcare Services was established in 2009 and provides qualified nurses and healthcare assistants to residential, nursing, dementia and mental health establishments. As an independent, experienced, family run company, Firstcall Healthcare Services continues to grow thanks to a high quality of service and careful checking and selection of staff.

Business need

Firstcall Healthcare place temporary nursing and care staff across the West Midlands. High quality service and strong compliance is at the heart of everything that they do. The team at Firstcall work hard to ensure that all staff training and qualifications are up to date and up to the required standard and they follow a strict recruitment procedure, including thorough Right to Work checks. Demonstrating these compliance checks became key as Firstcall tendered for the NHS Collaborative Procurement Partnership (NHS CPP) National Clinical Staffing Framework.

Solution

Using the TrustID solution, the recruitment team can now authenticate identity documents quickly and easily. And Firstcall have an auditable copy of the authenticated document which brings peace of mind to their clients and demonstrates compliance with pre-employment checks at the time of NHS audits.

The recruitment team at Firstcall can now quickly and confidently check the validity of key identity documents, such as passports, visas, International ID cards and driving licences. Following a short training session, Firstcall have built TrustID scans into their recruitment process, saving valuable time and giving them an extra level of security. The scanner verifies that the document is authentic or highlights potential problems which may indicate otherwise. ”

“Before installing the TrustID scanner, we had to rely on our own checks” explains Jill Roberts, Training and Compliance Manager at Firstcall “Some days, we had to manually run checks on several different candidates. The scanner is amazing – it’s quick and takes the risk out of accepting candidates.”

Electronic document validation to demonstrate compliance

The TrustID desktop validation software helps Firstcall to demonstrate continued innovation and excellence to their clients and clearly show that their candidates are thoroughly and reliably checked to meet Right to Work legislation. As a growing healthcare agency, they recently tendered to become part of the NHS Collaborative Procurement Partnership (NHS CPP) National Clinical Staffing Framework which stipulates that agencies must validate ID documents through the use of an ‘automated identity document authentication and verification scanner or system’. As part of the procurement process, all suppliers have an on-site process audit and will continue to be audited annually to ensure compliance with pre-employment checks.

“The NHS tender process was a trigger for us deciding to introduce the scanners” explains Jill “and they meant that we faced the audit with confidence, knowing that we had the right technology in place.”

Accepting documents in confidence

Firstcall Healthcare Solutions have added an additional level of security to their document checks and, since implementing the TrustID scanner, they have come across several fraudulent documents. One candidate presented a passport which, with just a manual inspection, may previously have allowed them to proceed to the next step in the recruitment process.

“At first glance, the document looked OK” explains Jill “but the scanner revealed the photo on the passport chip was a male whilst the candidate presenting it was female! It’s quite scary to think that if we were just relying on our own intuition, we could have missed that…”

With the TrustID scanner in place, Firstcall are now confident that they are taking the right steps to ensure that the documents they accept are authentic, removing the risk of both reputational damage and a possible financial penalty of up to £20,000 per illegal worker employed.

Conclusion

The TrustID system has been a welcome addition to the identity checking process at Firstcall Healthcare Services. The team are more confident than ever that they are placing candidates who are who they say they are, and who have a right to work in the UK, protecting their clients and the patients that they care for. They are also confident that they can operate within the NHS procurement framework, clearly demonstrating their effective use of electronic scanning and preventing those using fraudulent identity document from being employed.