The number of bureaucrats in the NHS has doubled since Covid hit despite frontline staff numbers staying the same, a damning report has found.
Analysis by the Policy Exchange thinktank showed there were 14,515 officials working in NHS England and the Department of Health in February — up from 7,883 in 2020.
These figures do not include governmental health agencies like the UK Health Security Agency which got bigger during the pandemic.
Meanwhile, the number of NHS nurses increased by just 7 per cent in the past two years, despite the frontline workforce being central to the NHS’ Covid recovery plan.
The Policy Exchange described the disparity as ‘astonishing’ and has called for an urgent review.
It will add to concerns the £12billion NHS cash injection will be swallowed up by the bloat of bureaucracy in the health service instead of tackling the waiting list crisis.
The extra money is being funded by a 1.25 per cent tax hike that broke a key Tory manifesto pledge in 2019 and came into effect in April.
A record 6.4m people – one in nine of the population – in England are on waiting lists for NHS treatment, with A&E and ambulance waits at their worst level ever.
The number of people waiting for routine hospital treatment in England has soared to another record of 6.36million. NHS data shows one in nine people were in the queue for elective operations such as hip and knee replacements and cataracts surgery by March — up from 6.18m in February
Separate data on A&E performance in April shows a record 24,138 people were forced to wait 12 hours or more to be treated, three times longer than the NHS target and the worst figure on record
The Policy Exchange report found the amount spent on salaries at the DoH and NHSE has doubled in the two years since February 2020, from £42m to £83m.
During that time, the number of nursing staff has risen slightly from 298,632 to 319,808.
The thinktank said central bureaucracy should not be allowed to continue to grow exponentially while frontline services stagnate.
Robert Ede, head of health and social care at the thinktank, told The Telegraph: ‘The uptick in the number of frontline NHS staff has been dwarfed by the astonishing increase of central bureaucrats – and this must be urgently addressed.’
Separate figures show 125 health officials – including 50 at NHS England – are on salaries of more than £150,000 a year, the newspaper reports.
Concerns are also being raised about the number of bureaucrats essentially doing the same job.
NHS England is currently merging with a number of other health bodies, including NHS Digital and Health Education England.
But Policy Exchange has said staff in managerial positions across the different organisations will have functions which duplicate each other.
Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, has promised to reform the NHS to ensure that record spending is used in the most efficient way.
Sir Gordon Messenger, a general who led the Royal Marines’ invasion of Iraq has been appointed to lead the shake-up.
He has been asked to stamp out ‘waste and wokery’ in the health service and ensure ‘every pound is well spent’.
It comes after Boris Johnson ordered ministers to slash the size of the Civil Service by a fifth to free up billions for tax cuts.
He said the Civil Service had become ‘swollen’ during the pandemic and more than 90,000 jobs had to go.
Official figures show there are now 306,000 patients in England who have been waiting for more than a year for their operation and 16,796 have been seeking treatment for more than two years.
Separate data on A&E performance in April shows a record 24,138 people were forced to wait 12 hours or more to be treated, three times longer than the NHS target and the worst figure on record.
Just seven in 10 patients were seen within four hours of arriving at ‘absolutely packed’ emergency departments making it the second-lowest rate ever recorded.
Ambulance figures for April show 999 waits fell compared to March but were higher than nearly all other months since records began.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk