Case Study: Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust - Healthcare Recruitment
By Gemma Raw
“Oxford Health has always found Sanctuary to be responsive to our needs and to provide high quality staff. Their compliance checks and rates all meet framework requirements and any issues are always highlighted. We use a lot of agency staff in the Trust and receive no complaints about Sanctuary staff or supplied workers.” - Linda Scott, Staffing Solutions Manager, Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust
Sanctuary Health has been a preferred supplier to Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust since January 2016. During this time, we have worked hard to support hiring managers in building a resilient resourcing solution in line with the NHSi caps.
The Challenge
Back in 2016, Oxford Health were experiencing recruitment challenges all too familiar with rural NHS Trusts. They were being charged too heavily by local recruitment agencies, who were also struggling to fill the vacancies. To help address this, Oxford Health set up a preferred supplier list (PSL). This was to reduce agency spend and give assurance over compliance and ability to fill vacancies in line with the NHSi caps. But this was just half the battle. They needed to award agencies with a place on their PSL capable of recruiting healthcare professionals across a large geographic area, covering several counties.
The Solution
Sanctuary specialises in filling long-term block bookings within the community for even the most hard-to-fill contracts in rural trusts. Oxford Health knew this and awarded Sanctuary a place on their PSL to help relieve some of the pressure. Our experienced consultants immediately sourced candidates across the local community. These included specialists in general practice, mental health community services and other acute inpatient services. Placing people and safe recruitment at the heart of our work, Oxford Health felt reassured from the start.
Within the first three years, we placed 75 highly qualified candidates. Many were within roles previously considered ‘hard-to-fill’. Yet, we not only quickly filled the vacancies, we did so at the best rate and in accordance with the NHSi cap rules.
To this day, we only ever present the Trust with fully compliant highly suitable candidates. We liaise with procurement, temporary staffing teams and the hiring managers on recruitment strategies for each locality.
