NHS Platform to Reinstate Retired Consultants
A new platform designed to connect retired clinicians to NHS providers is set to reduce long wait times for elective care as part of the Long Term Workforce Plan.
The NHS Emeritus pilot scheme, which was announced by NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard in June last year, will run in England for a year with the potential to be expanded across other work areas if successful.
Emeritus consultants who still hold a licence to practice will be linked to secondary care providers through a cloud-based platform, enabling them to help with long waiting lists.
The scheme is expected to be operational by next month, with recently retired consultants able to carry out appointments following a full registration process including pre-employment checks and face-to-face interviews.
NHS Emeritus benefits patients and providers
Providers will use the platform to upload activities they would like supported, which may range from outpatient appointments, specialist advice requests, and education and training support.
Emeritus consultants can then express their interest providing their expertise, at which point providers will select the professional who best matches the specific work listed.
These appointments are then scheduled with patients through the usual channels, and can be carried out remotely or in-person.
Four-fifths of those on waiting lists require an outpatient appointment rather than a surgical procedure, such as a follow-up appointment for cardiology or rheumatology.
Approximately 1,000 consultants retire from the NHS each year.
In offering remote appointments in these instances, the consultants can be based anywhere in England, subsequently bolstering hospitals in areas with workforce shortages in a particular specialty, higher demand for services, or those in remote areas where travel is difficult for patients.
The platform also offers an alternative to using agency staff while enabling consultants nearing retirement or recently retired an option to continue serving the NHS in a more flexible way.
Stella Vig, NHS national clinical director for elective care, commented:
The NHS prides itself on its hard-working and committed staff, and it is often the most experienced and knowledgeable clinicians who are lost to the NHS once they retire, even though they still have a lot more they can give to benefit patients.
“Many have said they want to be able to keep giving back to the health service once they have retired, but in a more flexible way – through the NHS Emeritus initiative, we can provide an opportunity for consultants to continue to work in the NHS in a way that fits in with their life and schedule, and ensures the NHS can still benefit from their skills and knowledge, whether that be through providing training and education, or continuing to see patients and help add much-needed capacity as we work toward our aims of bringing down the longest waits for elective care.
“It’s a simple concept, but one that we hope will benefit everyone taking part – and we envisage that this is just the beginning, with the potential to broaden NHS Emeritus out to a wider cohort and to include different types of work in the future, which could benefit thousands of patients across the country.”
Cutting wait times is a huge priority in the NHS today
The platform forms part of the NHS Elective Recovery Plan, slated as ‘the most ambitious catch-up programme in health service history’, with an aim to cut waiting lists for routine care.
According to recent data, the number of patients waiting for elective care in November was down to 6.39 million, with the waiting list for procedures and appointments down to 7.6 million (from 7.7 million in October).
These figures come in spite of significant demand for services and over one million appointments and procedures being rescheduled as a result of disruptive industrial action.
This progress was down to NHS staff delivering more than 1.63 million treatments in November, the highest monthly activity on record and around 150,000 more than the same month before the pandemic (1.48 million in Nov 2019).
Furthermore, waits of over 65 weeks have more than halved since their peak in June 2021 (from 233,051 to 94,563), and the NHS continues to make progress toward the aim of eliminating waits of more than one year, with these now less than 5% of the waiting list.
This latest initiative continues the NHS’s strive to reduce wait times, and follows one of the aims of the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, which highlights how the pandemic showed the enormous value of returners.
