Like many employers, the NHS is wrestling with the challenge of employees exiting the organisation, whether that’s to a new role or taking early retirement. Data suggests that one in nine of all NHS staff left the organisation in the year to September 2021. While this figure includes those going on maternity leave and career breaks, it all points to a worrying trend: that experienced talent is leaving the UK’s public health service at a time when it is still struggling with the after effects of the pandemic.
In nursing and midwifery alone, more than 27,000 professionals left the Nursing & Midwifery Council register in 2021-22, a 13% increase on the year before. What’s concerning about those leaving is the reasons they cited: too much pressure and poor workplace culture, increased workloads and a lack of staff were all issues highlighted.
The result is that delivery of services is becoming harder. That’s the same for any employer that loses talented employees; with a provider like the NHS, being unable to deliver services has a direct impact on the Patient Outcomes. Delays for appointments, diagnosis and treatment get longer, which in turn means the eventual cost for curing patients increases.
So, what’s the answer? Effectively, there are two options.
One is to hire more people: replace those that have left, and then hire more to alleviate the pressures that were causing staff to exit in the first place.
There are several problems with this. First, new hires take time to reach full productivity. Those brought in as replacements will not be able to hit the ground running; nor will the new employees that are coming in to help with taking some of the strain. And while over time the problem may solve itself, there will be a period where things will get worse. It’s a bit like trying to patch a leaky bucket while still filling it with water; you’ll fix the bucket eventually, but you’ll lose quite a bit of water before it’s all sorted.
Second, there are budgets to consider. There simply isn’t the money to increase the size of the NHS workforce in that way.
Finally, you must be able to find people to hire them. We’re still in the midst of the Great Resignation. There isn’t a single industry in the UK that doesn’t have a hiring problem, and candidates have all the power. Why would people choose to work in healthcare when other industries offer better pay and working conditions?
So, that’s one option discounted. What’s the other? Automation.
Automation in the NHS
There is a significant opportunity to look at the daily work of NHS employees and identify areas which can be automated, to free them up to focus on more valuable activities. For medical staff, that means more patient time; for administrative teams, that might be being able to deliver services more effectively, and not bogged down in paperwork.
Portsmouth Hospital University Trust has seen benefits for their NHS staff as much as their patients. By removing some of the repetitive workload from their clinicians, they can conserve their energy for work that is suited to critical clinical engagement such as more complex decision-making and empathy.
From handling lab results to referrals, sharing reports securely to shift planning, there are significant opportunities to optimise the delivery of services while improving both the standard of care and workload pressures. Plus, human error and inaccuracies can be cut dramatically.
PSTG, a technology company, has seen Intelligent Automation provide major NHS Trusts with cost effective tools for absorbing high volume work, seeing the adoption of technology used in more clinical and high urgency departments.
As the NHS looks for ways to continue to deliver high quality care at a time of workforce flux, automation offers a way to not only cover the gaps left by exiting employees but improve working conditions and enable a better standard of patient service. The UK’s healthcare workforce is already working within limited time constraints. By outsourcing certain tasks to automation, clinicians and administrators can focus on patient safety and improving the service they deliver.
By Leon Stafford, Country Manager, Digital Workforce