The parliamentary Health and Social Care Select Committee has told ministers that the NHS staffing crisis must be resolved if the treatment waiting list backlog is to be dealt with as efficiently as possible.
A record 5.8 million people were on the waiting list for routine operations and surgical procedures as of September last year, and the government subsequently announced in the autumn Budget a cash injection of a further £5.9 billion into the NHS to help alleviate the pressure.
The government had already announced a funding package in September 2021; an investment of £36 billion over three years which ministers said would open capacity for nine million additional routine checks, scans and operations, and provide 50,000 more nurses by spring 2024.
However, the committee has warned ministers in a report this week that NHS workers are likely to quit in the face of an “unquantifiable challenge” if staff shortages are not addressed now, and called on the government to lay out its plans to “meet workforce requirements” as promptly as possible.
Health secretary Sajid Javid had indicated that NHS England would publish its plans to deal with the staffing crisis by the end of November 2021, but none have been forthcoming.
As of last September, 300,000 people had been waiting more than a year for surgery, compared to 1,600 before Covid hit.
Furthermore, amid the current wave of the Omicron variant and staff shortfalls, some NHS hospitals have cancelled operations and declared critical incidents internally.
The committee’s report has been welcomed by industry bodies, with the British Medical Association saying that the staffing crisis was the “biggest barrier to tackling the backlog” caused by Covid and it was “time for the government to listen.”
Former health secretary and incumbent chair of the select committee, Jeremy Hunt, urged the government to up its game and “wake up” to the reality of the staffing shortage, which currently stands at around 93,000 individuals.
Hunt said: “The current wave of Omicron is exacerbating the problem, but we already had a serious staffing crisis, with a burnt-out workforce.
“Far from tackling the backlog, the NHS will be able to deliver little more than day-to-day firefighting unless the government wakes up to the scale of the staffing crisis facing the NHS.”
Hunt’s statement on the impact of the Omicron variant has been vindicated by the Royal College of Surgeons, which says that over one in every ten NHS staff members are currently self-isolating or recuperating from virus-related symptoms.
The Health Foundation think tank has forecast that the NHS will need over 19,000 additional nurses and 4,000 extra doctors just to revert to the standard window of 18-weeks waiting time for treatment.
Elsewhere in the select committee’s report are recommendations for the government to publish an independent assessment of projected staff numbers within the NHS every two years. It argues that an accurate projection of the future health workforce would help ministers better plan and ensure that enough doctors, nurses, and care staff were being trained to cope with future demand.
It also expressed grave concerns over staffing shortfalls in the social care sector, where there are currently around 105,000 vacancies.
Photo by JAFAR AHMED on Unsplash
