Government plans to cut NHS waiting lists have prompted warnings that the recruitment and retention crisis in the health service must be addressed if the plans are to succeed.
The plans, which also promise people greater choice around care, are part of a partnership deal between the NHS and the independent health sector.
The deal is intended to help expand healthcare capacity and widen patient choice by enabling more treatments to be delivered through the independent sector, while care remains free at the point of use.
A key goal for this deal is to hit the 18-week NHS waiting time for operations and other planned procedures. The independent healthcare sector estimates that they have capacity to provide an additional one million appointments a year for NHS patients.
The government said that this deal will mean the NHS makes better use of the independent sector to tackle waiting lists as well as providing millions more appointments itself.
Employee crisis
However, the Unite union warned the government not to ignore the challenges that NHS staff are facing.
Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite, said: “After so many years of neglect and the running down of our NHS it is important that this government is now ready to invest. But ministers must be in no doubt that any improvements will depend on tackling the recruitment and retention crisis that is gripping the service, driven by the years of real term pay cuts imposed on workers by the previous government.
“NHS workers are on their knees struggling to cope with current demands, which are at an all-time high. To simply expect the existing staff to do even more is both unacceptable and unachievable. The government’s plans to cut waiting lists will only be successful if it puts resolving the real issues faced by NHS workers at the centre of its plans.”
Employers ‘need to get upstream’
Consultant Steve Herbert said the NHS waiting list and the general health of the nation “is as much an economic challenge to government and employers alike as it is a wellbeing one to the citizens of the UK”.
He said that austerity, the pandemic, staffing issues, industrial action, and the rapidly ageing population have all contributed to an NHS that is “currently overwhelmed at pretty much every level”.
This matters because the UK – including the vast majority of people covered by some form of private medical insurance (PMI) – remains reliant on the NHS for some or all medical services or access to treatment pathways, he said.
“It’s also worth pointing out that despite a recent surge in both individual and corporate private healthcare provision, the Association of British Insurers estimates that just 6.2 million people currently have access to PMI cover. That’s around 1 in 10 of the UK population. It follows that the vast majority of employees and their employers remain exposed to NHS delays.”
The British Medical Association (BMA) estimates the median waiting times for treatment are more than 14 weeks, Herbert said.
“So, employees and their employers could be waiting for more than a quarter of a year just for treatment to begin under the NHS. The impact on health, absence, and reduced productivity is obvious.
“And the waiting list for NHS England is vast, currently sitting at 7.54 million total cases.”
Herbert welcomed the government’s announcement and highlighted the greater use of technology to speed access to appointments and access to a wider variety of times to physically interact with those healthcare services as positive moves.
However, he stressed that the government and the NHS face an uphill battle as social care challenges remain, funding options are limited, and massive health sector understaffing persists.
“There is only so much that can be delivered quickly. It will take years of the right medicine to return the waiting lists to where they need to be.
“The onus is therefore on employers to get ‘upstream’ of healthcare issues in their workforce. Employers should look again at all of their wellbeing policies and do everything they can to improve the health of their workforce. Prevention is better, and cheaper, than cure, so it is in everyone’s interest for employers to do what they can to limit the numbers of their workers needing medical treatment.”
Investment scrutiny
Unite added that the government must ensure that its reforms are not allowed to become an opportunity for the private sector to generate excessive profits from the taxpayer.
Graham said: “New investment will need to be carefully monitored and spent wisely. All too often in the past we have seen extra spending for new NHS initiatives disappear into the pockets of the private sector without any real benefit to patients.”
