NHS training and workforce planning must be reviewed, finance directors say

Abstract

The system of training and workforce planning in the NHS in England is failing and must be reviewed, NHS finance directors have said. A survey of finance directors has shown that increased spending on agency staff is now a major factor in worsening financial performance and that urgent cuts to spending on agency staff are being sought. The Healthcare Financial Management Association surveyed its members working in trusts, clinical commissioning groups, and area teams across the country. Members said that the NHS faced a rapidly deteriorating financial outlook for this financial year and “increasingly bleak” prospects for 2015-16. Paul Briddock, the association’s policy director, welcomed the announcement earlier this week in the chancellor’s autumn statement that the NHS would receive an extra £2bn next year. But …