People and Leadership
Amidst the strains of COVID, PwC worked with HCPC to register 6,500 capable practitioners to deliver care for the NHS when it was most needed. The firm brought the amount of time it takes to register from a long wait of 2.5 years to same day processing, whilst better protecting the public by transforming investigations into malpractice.
The Health & Care Professions Council (HCPC) registers 350,000 healthcare professionals across 15 professions, and ensures they are fit to practice, keeping the public safe in receiving healthcare.
HCPC had significant backlogs for registering international practitioners ready to work in the UK, and for its Fitness to Practice service, which it was under pressure to improve. Meanwhile, COVID-19 was increasing demand for healthcare professionals, and legislative changes were imminent, but the organisation’s resources were too stretched to make effective improvements.
HCPC and PwC embarked on a three-year strategic partnership, spanning 15 programmes, to transform the organisation’s culture and operations, speed up its services and reduce its backlogs. Improved HCPC throughput would enable the NHS to deploy the right people at the right time, and meet the ever-changing demand for care.
The consulting team brought together a wide range of specialisms, ranging from solutions architects to operational excellence coaches. As well as creating the right skills mix for the engagement and client, the firm was also careful to blend personality types, based on Myers-Briggs tests taken by both PwC and HCPC members.
The firm worked closely with the client to transform its culture, including daily one-to-one coaching for all levels and functions, to promote a shared mindset of collaboration and continuous improvement. The high level of trust created by this hands-on approach led to the firm actively facilitating some particularly challenging regular meetings, which could previously become confrontational.
By encouraging all HCPC staff to take ownership of the organisation’s transformation, PwC embedded a human-centred approach to adopting suitable technologies and exploiting their potential to deliver improvements. An example is the Champions Network, an HCPC team that drives ongoing in-house improvements, which was created and upskilled during the engagement and continues to be supported through PwC’s annual innovation days.
In the firm’s broad role as a strategic partner, it supported HCPC across a wide variety of activities, such as designing its services and target operating model, reimaging how it used external expertise, and designing its future technology. The firm kickstarted a collaboration with the People Directorate of NHS England (another PwC client), enabling both organisations to develop a market-leading understanding of the application of digital credentials technology. This design is enabling the NHS to respond to rapidly-changing demand by deploying its workforce quickly and flexibly, and reduce its spending on agency staff.
PwC also applied its Run & Transform approach to achieve rapid improvements to the client’s Registration service. The firm’s Execution Managed Service took care of immediate processing issues and backlogs, while a parallel programme team worked with the client to explore and co-design improved services for the future.
The firm’s work achieved an impressive list of results which means HCPC can better protect the public and better provide the NHS with the workforce it needs. This includes reducing a 2½-year backlog to same-day processing, and clearing 6,500 professionals to augment the NHS workforce. The work has also enabled a 56% improvement in the efficiency of investigations around safe practice. Most importantly, the client’s culture is totally different, and HCPC’s impressive new capabilities are now enabling it to deliver in-house improvements that surpass even those of the original engagement.
View the PwC profile in the MCA Members Directory.