Doncaster & Bassetlaw Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust employs approximately 7,000 permanent staff across three different hospitals - Bassetlaw Hospital in Worksop, The Doncaster Royal Infirmary and Montagu Hospital in Mexborough.

Upon his arrival at the Trust, the new Chief Executive noticed that each employee did not have their own identification card. Previously the Trust provided each member of staff with a pin badge, which showed the name of the employee and their job title, but did not have a photo or any additional information and carried no security features.

To increase security and visibility of staff across the three hospitals, a project was instigated to provide secure ID cards for all staff.

Rachel Turner, Contracts Officer, was tasked with coordinating the introduction of ID cards across the three sites. Initially the idea was to purchase card printers, blank cards and the appropriate software to produce the cards, but it was quickly established that there was no spare staff resource to produce the cards. The Trust needed an external solution, and after undertaking a competitive tendering exercise, appointed Payne Security with its bureau card service.

Payne Security's bureau card production offered the perfect fit with the Trust's card production needs. The service removes the need for internal staff resource to produce cards, along with taking away the requirement for capital expenditure on printers.

Photography schedules are organised for each department and they are visited in turn to take photographs of each employee for use on their card. Once the photographs are collated and the data for each individual is complete, the data is sent to Payne Security electronically via a secure FTP link. Rachel has been extremely pleased with the data supply to Payne Security, adding that it "flies through" and a receipt is always received to confirm the data has been sent successfully. The dedicated PCS system, which is used to control the production of cards includes automatic photo cropping, which ensures that all of the photos maintain a similar format on each card.

The cards contain a Mifare® chip to allow for additional functions to be added to the card in future, potentially including access control, parking and access to photocopying and other services. The cards carry a unique identifier number for each employee, which is shared between Payne Security and the Trust for records purposes. To add security to the card and make it difficult to imitate or copy, Microtext and guilloche are incorporated into the design. Currently there is a single design to cover all employees; however the trust is considering creating separate designs for use by contractors and other visitors to the site to comply with the scheme and make identification easier.

As soon as cards were issued to staff, it became mandatory to have the card displayed whenever an employee is on hospital property, to comply with security policy. In addition to this, a challenge scheme was implemented to allow all employees to challenge anybody not displaying their card to produce it, as proof that they are eligible to be on site. In order to ensure that the cards were displayed correctly, the trust chose to purchase lanyards, clips and cardholders from Payne Security. This allowed all requirements to be covered cost-effectively by a single source, saving the Trust a great deal of time and effort in searching for multiple suppliers.

The new cards have been very well received by the Trust's employees, with some of those not already issued with a card asking when they will be able to get one. The Security team have also expressed their delight with the level of security included in the card, making it easier for them to identify employees while on site and making all three sites safer for employees and members of the public.

Download The Doncaster & Bassetlaw NHS Trust Case Study