Retired hospital consultants are to be drafted in to help the NHS clear the backlog of care, health leaders have announced.
Newly retired specialists will be able to offer virtual consultations from anywhere in England to help hospitals across the country clear the record 7.4 million people on the NHS waiting list.
Meanwhile, speaking about the forthcoming NHS workforce plan, health leaders said that they did not want to inhibit people with poor school grades entering the NHS and the plan would offer “alternative channel into professions for people with the talent”.
The health service is issuing a call to newly retired doctors to “keep caring” by performing outpatient appointments in early retirement.
Some 1,000 consultants retire from the NHS every year.
From autumn they will be able to sign up to a new digital platform offering their ability either in person or virtually.
This digital tool will help us to match patients with retired doctors who we know are keen to stay working in a flexible way— Amanda Pritchard, NHS England chief executive
Hospitals will be able to use the platform to find consultants they need to help provide care for patients and help cut down their waiting lists.
It is also hoped the move will also crack down on expensive agency spend.
NHS England said that more than four-fifths of people on the waiting list need an outpatient appointment such as a follow-up for cardiology or rheumatology – rather than a surgical procedure.
Those requiring a face-to-face appointment or follow-up will be seen in the usual way, a spokesperson said.
Speaking at the NHS Confed Expo conference in Manchester, Amanda Pritchard, NHS England chief executive, said: “We will set out how we want to keep people at the end of their career engaged in ways that work for them.
“The experience of the pandemic showed the enormous value of returners in supporting the current workforce.
“And we have continued to bring back staff through the NHS Reservists Programme to respond to surges in demand or emergency situations when they arise.
“We want to continue to provide routes to return for staff with the skills we need.
Creating this new route back has the potential to help us see patients quicker, give regular doctors more time to spend on the most complex cases and give trusts an alternative to using expensive agency staff— Amanda Pritchard, NHS England chief executive
“So as part of that I can announce today that from this autumn, newly retired doctors will be offered the chance to keep caring and to continue tackling the elective backlog.
“A new digital platform will allow them to sign up to deliver outpatient appointments – either virtually or in person.
“Local NHS trusts will be able to upload details of the patients that need to be seen and they will then be matched with doctors, based on their availability and area of expertise.
“Creating this new route back has the potential to help us see patients quicker, give regular doctors more time to spend on the most complex cases and give trusts an alternative to using expensive agency staff.
“But just as importantly it gives our most experienced specialists the ability to keep on contributing to the NHS but in a way that fits far better around their lives.”
An NHS spokesperson said that all “appropriate checks” will be carried out before newly-retired consultants become fully registered on the platform and they will need an active registration on the specialist register and the GMC registry.
Meanwhile Ms Pritchard said that more work on the retention of staff was also important.
“We can’t invest in training and additional routes to bring more people into the health service if when they get here they find the conditions aren’t right and they leave,” she said.
She said the much-anticipated NHS workforce plan would be published “soon”.
While this new initiative is needed, 8% of medical posts in secondary care are currently vacant, and so the worry is that it could be little more than a sticking plaster for the much deeper workforce crisis that is hindering what the NHS can deliver— Danny Mortimer, NHS Employers
During a recent visit to her old school in Durham she met children as young as 11 who expressed a desire to work in the NHS.
Ms Pritchard said: “We can’t afford for that wave of enthusiasm to crash against the closed door of insufficient places on medical or nursing courses.
“Neither can we afford for it to crash against a cliff face of high academic requirements if we can provide an alternative channel into professions for people with the talent and the drive to do those roles.”
The NHS has already announced that the workforce plan will include an expansion of apprenticeship roles for both doctors and nurses.
Commenting on the announcement, Danny Mortimer, chief executive of NHS Employers, which is part of the NHS Confederation, said: “The NHS has already been working hard to clear the backlogs but concerted action is needed to help it go even further.
“With demand so high and with 432,000 outpatient appointments having had to be cancelled or rescheduled because of the walkouts over the last six months, health leaders will welcome reinforcements in the form of retired medics rejoining the service to lend their support.
“This is on top of flexibilities that the NHS offers already around retirement and working arrangements so that vital talent can be retained.
“While this new initiative is needed, 8% of medical posts in secondary care are currently vacant, and so the worry is that it could be little more than a sticking plaster for the much deeper workforce crisis that is hindering what the NHS can deliver.
“Leaders are eager to see how the Government will respond to this challenge in its imminent workforce plan.”
Meanwhile, Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, told the conference that more must be done to create a “health strategy” instead of “NHS policies”.
In his keynote address to the conference, he said: “We need to have a health strategy, not just policies for the NHS.
“If we are to thrive in the health service… we know we can’t succeed unless we sort out the terrible crisis unfolding in social care; we know that we need action on smoking, on nutrition, on exercise; also the social determinants of health – housing.
“Yesterday I was at the primary care practice down the road, the GP there said to me that in one in four of the people she sees, their problem is not actually a health problem, it is a housing problem.”
But he said that the Government “appears to be going in the wrong direction”, adding: “We got promised a Health Disparities White Paper across Whitehall, we got promised a Mental Conditions Strategy across Whitehall, we have now got a Major Conditions Strategy led by the department and we’re working with that strategy.
“We want it to be as good as possible, but I don’t see that concerted joined-up effort around that.”
Mr Taylor also called for investment in the service, more work on prevention, a new social contract with the public to empower them to take charge of their health and he highlighted the importance of the NHS workforce.
