Source · Select Committees · Health and Social Care Committee
Recommendation 8
8
Paragraph: 64
The Government and NHS England must also develop a specific plan to address gaps in...
Conclusion
The Government and NHS England must also develop a specific plan to address gaps in the diagnostic workforce, setting out how it will address both short-term and long- term shortages in key professions, and particularly what investment will be required to deliver sustainable long-term increases in these key professions.
Paragraph Reference:
64
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government
Acknowledged
Health Education England continues to take action to ensure that the NHS has the cancer workforce it needs. This includes investing £52 million in 2021/22 in the cancer and diagnostics workforce, through delivering additional medical places and providing grants to train clinical endoscopists, reporting radiographers, clinical nurse specialists and chemotherapy nurses, as well as developing an advanced clinical practitioner role in oncology and extending cancer support worker training. Between 2016 – 2021, the annual growth rate of the overall cancer workforce in our priority specialisms has remained between 3-4%. Building on this progress, the Government’s forthcoming 10 Year Cancer Plan will set a new vision for how we will lead the world in cancer care, including ensuring we have the right workforce in place. In addition, to support longer term strategic planning, in July 2021 the Department commissioned Health Education England (HEE) to work with partners to review long term strategic trends for the health workforce and regulated professionals in the social care workforce. This will review and renew the long-term strategic framework for the health workforce, to help ensure we have the right skills, values and behaviours to deliver world-leading services and continued high standards of care. This work will look at the key drivers of workforce demand and supply over the longer term and will set out how they may impact upon the required shape of the future workforce to help identify the main strategic choices facing us, to develop a shared and explicit set of planning assumptions. Building on this work, the Department for Health and Social Care has recently commissioned NHS England to develop a workforce strategy, and will set out the key conclusions of that work in due course.