RCoA responds to Reducing Bureaucracy consultation
The Secretary of State for Healthcare spoke at the Royal College of Physicians about the future of healthcare in July, following this the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) launched a consultation on the issue of “Reducing bureaucracy in the health and social care system”.
The College has submitted its response to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Rt Hon Matt Hancock MP.
In the response, the following six key areas of improvement are identified
- patient or client record management – COVID-19 has underscored the need for more transparency, better use of data, more interoperability, and technological innovation
- mandatory training – we can design a more streamlined way of providing mandatory training for staff with better sharing of information across systems and between different agencies to avoid staff having to take the same or similar modules multiple times
- recurring or routine reports – we can empower our clinicians, and unlock the time they have to care for their patients, through streamlining existing reporting requirements and standard operating procedures to reduce duplication while maintaining a high standard of patient safety
- clinical governance – we can design a more efficient clinical governance mechanism to foster innovation. Current requests have to go through several levels of approval which often require unnecessarily strict financial controls
- internal communications – we can enhance the way in which different teams and departments communicate through development of better integrated systems and portals within hospitals
- inductions for doctors in training – we can develop a smoother induction process for trainees moving between Trusts, including improved sharing of information and qualifications, and ensure that trainees do not need to repeat core general training topics
The College response also highlights how perioperative care can contribute to the reduction of bureaucracy by streamlining surgical pathways with benefits for both patients and healthcare professionals.