Case Study: Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust achieves £21k savings and cuts transcription turnaround from 15 to 3 days with BigHand

BigHand Digital Dictation helps Salisbury NHS Trust improve turnaround times, reduce costs

Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust, a major acute trust serving over 200,000 people, faced inefficiencies from analogue tape-based dictation — lost/damaged tapes, typing backlogs, hidden workloads and long transcription turnaround times. After a pilot, the Trust selected BigHand and its BigHand Correspond digital dictation, speech recognition and clinical correspondence solution to replace tape systems and improve workflow across clinical departments.

BigHand rolled out digital dictation to over 300 users across 22 departments, giving clinicians and secretaries real-time access, tracking and reporting. Within a year the Trust cut routine transcription turnaround from about 10–15 days to 3–5 days (urgent letters within 24 hours), reduced specialty turnarounds (e.g., Diabetes from 17 to 8 days) and achieved measurable cost savings — £21k saved in year one in overtime/bank payments in the medicine directorate, with overall bank/overtime costs falling substantially in year two.

Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust

Wendy Young

Medical Secretary