Workforce planning: the NHS is stuck in the present

The NHS workforce plan and “Labour’s health mission” have something in common. Neither is fit for the future.12The failure to anticipate how emerging technologies will meet future needs leaves NHS and social care service planners perpetually on the back foot and patients destined to be provided with less than optimum care. And there seems to be no intention of undertaking comprehensive horizon scanning to determine the effect of technological advances on future clinical practice and the organisation of care.Most effort is focused on where services will be located to deliver care and the type and number of professionals needed. This is short term planning, not strategic thinking.And to put the NHS on the front foot? The NHS has continually engaged in “substitution,” where resources are regrouped across and within care settings to exploit the best and least costly solutions. Think, for example, of the implementation of day case surgery.One useful…
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