BHF comment
BHF responds to NHS Long Term Workforce Plan
The Plan published by NHS England and backed by Government sets out how the health service will address existing vacancies and meet the challenges of a growing and ageing population. The aim is to recruit and retain hundreds of thousands more staff over 15 years.
It’s estimated there are currently 112,000 NHS vacancies, and NHS England says that shortages could total 360,000 by 2037.
According to NHS England, today’s Plan could mean the health service has at least an extra 60,000 doctors, 170,000 more nurses and 71,000 more allied health professionals in place by 2036/37, when taken with retention measures.
We believe this will provide a strong foundation for addressing the grave NHS workforce crisis, and we look forward to working with Government on the specifics of how to address cardiovascular care staff shortages.
Dr Charmaine Griffiths, our Chief Executive, said: “This is an ambitious and much-needed plan which could help more heart patients get lifesaving care when they need it in years to come, if delivered in full.
"Recruiting and retaining more NHS staff is key to successfully delivering timely and high quality care for heart patients, and we look forward to working with Government on specific shortages in heart care.
"There are nearly 390,000 people in England currently facing and distressing waits for heart tests and treatment, putting them at higher risk of disability and even death. Alongside this welcome long-term planning, we also need to see short-term measures to help heart patients who need time-critical care now."
What does this plan mean for heart patients?
The Plan lays out a series of sensible measures to grow and support the NHS workforce, which have the potential to bring lasting and beneficial changes for heart patients for years to come.
These include:
- Increasing the number of GP training places by 50 per cent to 6,000 by 2031/32. The NHS has committed to increasing the number of GP specialty training places to 5,000 a year by 2027/28.
- Equipping the NHS workforce with the right skills and knowledge to shift care towards prevention and early detection of diseases, such as cardiovascular disease;
- Developing and testing new approaches for managing major conditions such as cardiac and respiratory disease;
- Increasing training places for healthcare scientists by 13 per cent to more than 850 places by 2028/29, putting the NHS on the path to increase training places by more than 30 per cent to over 1,000 places by 2031/32. Healthcare scientists – such as echocardiographers - play a key role in the cardiac workforce, bringing their technical expertise to aid diagnosis and monitoring of heart conditions.
- Having a clearer understanding of different roles and skill sets within the NHS workforce by working with organisations to gather better data on specialist staff.
However, NHS England has said that it will publish a plan to support the NHS workforce to better detect and manage major conditions such as cardiovascular disease (CVD) by March 2024.
Advances in technology and treatments mean that staff numbers and roles will change over time so the NHS said it will refresh the Long Term Workforce Plan at least every two years to help meet future requirements.
The BHF says this is a welcome commitment but it’s important that these numbers are independently verified and published publicly.
In partnership with the British Cardiovascular Society, we are carrying out a census of the cardiac workforce in England.
The lack of data on the cardiac workforce makes workforce planning extremely challenging, and we want to change that.
The information we collect will help us to develop the most comprehensive dataset on the cardiac workforce to date to inform better workforce planning and system transformation.
Take part in our cardiac workforce census