Labour asks doctors to ‘get rid of stupid stuff’ in blitz on NHS waste

Labour will ask doctors how to “get rid of stupid stuff” in a planned blitz on NHS waste.

Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, has urged health service staff to write to him with examples of bad working practices that waste their time, patients’ time and taxpayers’ money.

Speaking at the annual conference of the Royal College of Physicians, Mr Streeting said front line staff should be the ones deciding what works and what does not amid “stupid” red tape, protocols and inefficiencies.

He said he would adopt a model from Singapore General Hospital, adding: “They have a programme I think the NHS could do with – it’s called Get Rid of Stupid Stuff. It does what it says on the tin.

“I want to hear from you about the stupid stuff we need to get rid of – the things that waste your time, that waste your patients’ time, and that waste taxpayers’ pounds.

“I’m inviting all of you to write to me about the stupid stuff that you see holding the NHS back, so Labour can make the case for change this side of the election and hit the ground running after it. I’m serious about this.”

The shadow health secretary said he had heard stories of “1980s technology” holding staff back, and doctors being “armed with pagers when the rest of the world ditched them in the last century”.

In one example, an NHS surgeon had “accessed a PDF file with his patients’ notes only to find they had been scanned in the wrong order, meaning he had to print them all out and reorganise them to get the information he needed”.

In another, a leading radiologist had detailed how “he has to enter seven passwords just to get the information he needs” for every patient he sees.

“It costs hundreds of thousands of pounds to train a doctor. Wasting so much of your time on these inefficiencies is a waste in every sense,” said Mr Streeting.

NHS staff have also complained about tickbox exercises and mandatory training, including modules on equality, diversity and inclusion, which take doctors up to an hour to complete each of 33 sessions required.

On Thursday, NHS England outlined plans to cut these and give doctors back a whole working day as part of measures to improve their working lives.