Case Study: University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust achieves faster, cost-saving clinical correspondence with BigHand

UHB Hospital triggers process improvement, cuts costs through BigHand technology

University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust, an acute trust with over 8,000 staff serving a population of about 350,000, faced fragmented outpatient clinical correspondence processes: slow dictation-to-transcription workflows, inconsistent letter formatting, backlogs requiring outsourced transcription and excessive administrative burden on medical secretaries. To meet targets for cost savings, faster turnaround and a more paper‑light process, the Trust selected BigHand and its workflow, dictation and BigHand Speech Recognition technologies.

BigHand deployed an integrated solution that routes clinician dictations through speech recognition into an editor for rapid proofreading, electronic sign‑off and automated routing to the Trust’s document store and GPs. The implementation doubled secretarial throughput, cut turnaround times dramatically (for example Respiratory 20→6 days; Cardiology 18→7 days; Cardiac Surgery 20→9 days), eliminated outsourced transcription, and increased productivity by 53%, delivering significant annual savings and improved patient correspondence using BigHand’s platform.

University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust

Mike Milton

Transformation Manager