Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 3
3
The NHS will be less able to deal with backlogs if it does not address...
Recommendation
The NHS will be less able to deal with backlogs if it does not address longstanding workforce issues and ensure the existing workforce, including in urgent and emergency care and general practice, is well supported. NHSE&I believes it will be 2 or 3 years before there is a material increase in NHS capacity as a result of the changes it plans to elective care. Large numbers of people waiting for so long 6 NHS backlogs and waiting times in England presents a huge risk to primary care and emergency services (such as general practice and A&E) because unmet health demand can result in more GP appointments and more medical emergencies. Evidence from the University of Manchester’s Voices of COVID-19 project highlights the concerns of frontline NHS staff regarding the public dissatisfaction they face and the NHS’s lack of capacity to deal with backlogs of care. The Department and NHSE&I need to ensure the NHS workforce is adequately supported and that its service recovery planning is integrated with its planning for staffing and other types of resources. Recommendation: In implementing its recovery plan NHSE&I’s should publish its assessment of how the size of the NHS workforce (GPs, hospital doctors and nurses) will change over the next three years, so that there is transparency about the human resources that the NHS has available to deal with backlogs.
Government Response
Not Addressed
HM Government
Not Addressed
3.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: Spring 2023 3.2 Ensuring that the NHS has a workforce in the right numbers and with the right skills to deliver service commitments to patients is crucial. The government is already expanding the size of the workforce, aligning workforce planning with service and financial planning and looking at the long-term strategic drivers of workforce demand and supply. 3.3 Following on from expansion over the last decade, growth of the NHS workforce continues to be a priority for this government, alongside supporting the existing workforce to ensure the NHS meets the rise in demand for health and care services. Ensuring the NHS is well staffed, with colleagues well looked after, is a key focus. An example of this, as demonstrated by the manifesto commitment, is to deliver 50,000 more nurses. 3.4 On longer-term workforce planning, in July 2021 the government commissioned Health Education England to work with partners and review long term strategic trends for the health and regulated social care workforce. This will review and renew the long-term strategic framework for the health workforce, to help ensure the NHS has the right numbers, skills, values and behaviours to deliver world leading clinical services and continued high standards of patient care. For the first time ever, the framework will also include regulated professionals working in social care, like nurses and occupational therapists. 3.5 Building on this work the department of Health and Social Care has recently commissioned NHS England and Improvement and HEE to develop a Long-Term Workforce Plan and key conclusions from this work will be published in due course.