Staffing shortfall major risk to NHS long term plan

A new briefing paper has predicted an increase in NHS staff shortages from over 100,000 at present to almost 250,000 by 2030, presenting a major risk to the NHS long term plan.

The health care workforce in England: make or break?, jointly published by The King’s Fund, the Health Foundation and the Nuffield Trust, warns that the forthcoming NHS Long Term Plan risks becoming an unachievable ‘wish list’ of initiatives if critical shortages in the health care workforce remain unaddressed.

Lasting staff shortages could lead to growing waiting lists, deteriorating care quality and the risk that some of the money for frontline services pledged at the Budget will go unspent. The warning is the result of a new forecast of the staffing gaps in the NHS workforce, predicting an increase in NHS staff shortages from over 100,000 to almost 250,000 by 2030, meaning that over one in six health service posts could be short of an appropriate staff member by the end of the next decade.

The three organisations further warn that these shortages could be over 350,000 if the NHS continues to lose staff and cannot attract skilled workers from abroad. With high numbers of doctors and nurses leaving their jobs before retirement, and training budgets among those facing potential cuts, the report says that the health service is ‘reaching a tipping point’.

The briefing sets out five tests for the NHS Long Term Plan, requiring a ‘funded and credible strategy’ to: address the immediate workforce shortages; deliver a sustainable workforce over the next 10 years; support new ways of working across the health and social care workforce; address inequalities in recruitment, pay and career progression; and strengthen workforce and health service planning.

Candace Imison, director of Policy at the Nuffield Trust, said: “The NHS has a woeful track record in ensuring that the health service has the right numbers of staff it needs in all the right places. This has now reached a critical juncture: unless the NHS Long Term Plan puts in place urgent and credible measures to shore up the workforce both in the short term and in the longer term, it risks being a major failure. Solving the acute and systemic problems affecting the healthcare workforce will not be easy, but we owe it to patients, staff and taxpayers to start now.”

Richard Murray, director of Policy at The King’s Fund, commented: “The NHS cannot meet increasing demand from patients without the workforce to staff services. Unless the NHS long-term plan is linked to a credible strategy for recruiting and retaining staff, there is a real risk that some of the extra funding pledged by the government will go unspent and waiting lists for treatment will continue to grow.”

Anita Charlesworth, director of Economics at the Health Foundation, added: “The NHS is overstretched and services are being compromised by serious staff shortages. As things stand, this problem will only get worse over the next decade, putting access and quality of care at risk. Unless the government and system leaders take radical action and prioritise the NHS workforce, staffing shortages will more than double to almost a quarter of a million by 2030. The NHS can’t sustain current services, let alone improve, with such a large and growing gap between the staff it needs and the people available to provide care.”