Director calls for better health care for NHS staff

NHS staff should be fast tracked into services such as physiotherapy and mental health treatment, according to national director for health and work Carol Black.

Black, who is also professor of rheumatology at UCL Medical School, was president of the Royal College of Physicians from 2002 to 2006.

She told a recent workforce conference organised by Health Service Journal that it made no sense for trusts to send staff to external health providers when sickness absence costs the NHS £1.7bn (€1.9bn; $2.7) a year.

Instead, NHS staff should be put at the front of the queue for treatments that would return them to work sooner, thereby saving the NHS money in the long term. She said: “If someone we employ is benefiting patients by avoiding absence it’s so silly not to do this.

“I can’t understand why we can’t do this. People say the public wouldn’t like it. But if I were a patient I would quite like to think I had a stable, well motivated, engaged community in my local hospital.”

NHS staff are having to wait months for physiotherapy appointments even when there might be a trained professional “two doors down” from where they worked, she said.