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NHS IN TROUBLE THANKS TO NEW UK POLICIES

 

As Brexit approaches and modifications to freedom of movement rights turn out to be clearer, nightmares are beginning to appear. The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) has apparently projected that employing EU NHS staff post-Brexit would cost in the county of £500m a year.

 

This boosting of the amount from the current £150m stems from Brexit’s consequent end to freedom of movement. This later increase in the NHS bill is expected to push the cost of three-year Tier 2 visas to increase from £4,409 to £8,609 by 2020, conferring to a latest article in The Guardian. This could make it more expensive to grant EU staff to work within the NHS. Dr Andrew Goddard, the RCP’s president elect, was cited as proposing that “the NHS would have to find £105m a year to employee staff that formerly involved no immigration costs because of freedom of movement”. Along with these visa costs, the probable duty to cover visas for families and employ health staff from outside the EU would drive the “total bill up to a budding £490m a year”.

 

In the year 2017, 12,303 health specialists from abroad joined the NHS in England. To uphold this number the government faces what Dr Andrew Goddard states “a significant new cost stress” and that if they could not obscure it and thereby permit the cost on to overseas health workers, the UK might be at a major threat of damaging their reduced staffing levels.

 

Nevertheless, Dr Goddard congratulated Ministers for relaxing Tier 2 rules that formerly limited the number of foreign doctors working in the UK by eliminating doctors and nurses from the cap on skilled worker visas. This advancement of inspiring overseas health workers is an action in the correct course and expectantly one that will restraint Brexit’s destruction to NHS staffing levels and possibly drop the cost of the overall bill.

 

Finally , Ministers have identified the vital role overseas staff play within the NHS and hence  this mindful attitude for maintaining the UK’s level of international health professionals is positive in spite of Brexit’s probable increase to NHS costs.