Consultants vote for strike action and staff sickness rockets as the government finally issues its long-term workforce plan The British Medical Association’s ballot of consultants has delivered an overwhelming vote in favour of strike action. In a turnout of 71%, some 86% of the NHS’ senior doctors voted in favour of a walk-out on 20 and 21 July. The BMA called for the government to “come forward with a credible offer” to prevent the action and improve retention. Meanwhile, staff sickness in the NHS in England has hit a record high, according to analysis by the Nuffield Trust, which found that 5.6% of days were lost last year. Mental health problems were the most common reason, followed by colds, flu, and infectious diseases (The Guardian).   Miriam Deakin of NHS Providers said the figures “lay bare the psychological strain on staff” of dealing with high demand, staff shortages and poor working conditions. While Unison head of health Sara Gorton said the NHS needed to fill vacancies and better protect staff to improve the situation. Against this background, the government finally published its much-delayed long-term workforce plan, which has three main strands: to radically increase the number of doctors and nurses by expanding training places; to create apprenticeships and other new routes into medicine; and to use technology to make better use of available staff (Health Service Journal).

Barclay highlights tech ideas in workforce plan  Health and social care secretary Steve Barclay emphasised some of the tech ideas in the long-term workforce plan (above) in the media round on Friday morning. He told the BBC’s Radio4 Today programme that investment in cloud telephony would help to “end the 8am, Monday morning rush” for GP appointments, backing up leaks to Conservative-supporting papers that ‘robot receptionists’ could be introduced for administrative tasks, such as scheduling appointments, flagging test results, and analysing referrals (Pulse summary). Barclay also flagged the potential of AI to manage waiting lists, support diagnosis and treatment, and so improve productivity.

Digital NHS Health Check announced A digital version of the NHS Health Check is to be rolled out across England from next Spring. The existing NHS Health Check was introduced following the publication of 2004’s public health strategy and consists of a face-to-face check-up with a GP. The digital version will consist of an online questionnaire plus cholesterol and blood pressure checks, which can be completed at home, or in pharmacies and practices. The government claims the new arrangement could deliver a million checks in four years, and identify tens of thousands of cases of hypertension, which can lead to stroke and heart attacks (The Guardian).

Health tech news: 999 outage; Leeds trials mammography AI; Circle Health introduces PROMS platform The national 999 call system suffered an outage on Sunday, 25 June. NHS England issued a statement saying that BT was working to resolve the issue, but the public were urged to use alternative numbers to contact the ambulance and other public services. Few details have been released, but Ofcom is investigating (Sky News). Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is trialling AI software from Canadian company Densitas with the aim of identifying positioning errors during breast cancer screening (digitalhealth.net). Circle Health Group has introduced a patient recorded outcomes measures platform from My Clinical Outcomes across its 54 private hospitals (Health Tech Newspaper).