Customer Stories | November 13, 2024

Barts Health uses robotics to transform HR operations

In the fast-paced world of healthcare, managing all the different HR processes while efficiently delivering the care that patients need is crucial for the smooth functioning of hospitals, clinics and healthcare facilities.

But the healthcare industry faces a double dilemma: an increasing scarcity of skilled workers and limited use of modern HR technologies that can streamline different processes for things like recruitment, onboarding and performance management. 




Operational efficiency is crucial

That was the challenge facing Barts Health NHS Trust, one of the largest acute National Health Service trusts in the UK, where Healthcare staff attrition rates and shortages at its hospitals put a heavy strain on recruitment and onboarding processes.

Meanwhile, funding constraints prevented hiring more administrative staff to cope with the higher demand, while at the same time services needed to be delivered more efficiently and effectively.

The team at Barts Health needed an alternative solution.



Around 2.5 million people in East London rely on Barts Health for their healthcare needs.

Meanwhile, the hospital group’s HR team processes more than 5000 recruitment and onboarding cases each year. 




Transforming HR operations 

The hospital group was looking for a scalable and cost-effective solution for streamlining HR processes while maintaining high standards of accuracy and compliance. 

And since a team of engineers and consultants from DXC Technology had run other successful engagements using robotic process automation platforms to automate routine tasks, Barts Health turned to them for support. 

In 2021, engineers and product teams from Barts Health and DXC began to design, deploy and maintain robotic automation systems within the hospital group’s People Services department. The resulting robotics as a service solution (called DXC RaaS) was aimed at automating routine HR tasks to increase accuracy, reduce administrative burden and significantly accelerate operations.  




The DXC RaaS solution allows teams to focus on more critical aspects of their day-to-day roles, such as improving staff satisfaction, operational efficiency and ultimately patient care.  





Focusing on the people, not the paper

Robotic process automation is becoming a cornerstone of modern business operations. And as a result of this solution, Barts achieved greater operational efficiency, lower costs and improved allocation of resources across its People Services teams. 

This included:

  • Delivering 18K+ worth of man-hours through RaaS bots in one year
  • Processing approximately 80K case records in one year
  • Delivering the ROI it was seeking in the first year of the four-year deal
  • Experiencing less than a 0.03% bot failure rate

“We selected DXC for its proven expertise in automation and healthcare support," says Carolyn Apps, Deputy Director of People Services at Barts Health NHS Trust. "The partnership allowed us to deliver more efficient HR services across our group of hospitals, ultimately releasing capacity to provide better healthcare to the millions of people who rely on us every day.”





 

The big picture

More than 1,600 healthcare and life science customers around the globe rely on DXC to help them transform, improve diagnostic accuracy, analyze large data sets to speed diagnosis, speed billing and analyze patient data securely for improved diagnosis and patient care.

And our work with Barts Health is another great example of DXC excelling at providing deep industry expertise and an in-depth understanding of the unique challenges and opportunities our clients face.