Not only does widespread recruitment freezes in cancer and diagnostic services across the NHS affect care, it led to a national outsourcing bill of £276 million in 2023.
The Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) has raised concerns about widespread recruitment freezes in cancer and diagnostic services across the NHS.
More than a fifth of NHS trusts have implemented recruitment freezes, across every English region and every UK nation.
This calls into question the feasibility of the government’s commitments to reform elective care, established earlier this week – including bringing down diagnostic delays and delivering same-day results. Recruitment freezes put these ambitions at risk: to build diagnostic capacity, we must build the diagnostic workforce.
“Recruitment freezes are a false economy, and it is patients who will pay the price,” says Katharine Halliday, president of the Royal College of Radiologists.
“We are facing severe workforce shortfalls and rising demand, so all these freezes will achieve is to force departments to spend more on costly alternatives,”
The cause of these freezes is mixed. Some trusts are attempting to balance local budgets while others have been placed under freezes by national NHS bodies, preventing them from hiring new trainees, consultants, or specialist doctors.
Aside from increasing already heavy workloads, shortfalls drive higher costs for the NHS, as demand must be managed through locums and private companies.
Outsourcing is already widespread in radiology, with 99% of trusts unable to meet their reporting requirements on their own in 2023 and a national outsourcing bill of £276 million, according to the RCE. This amount could pay the salaries of 2,690 consultants, it says.
In 2024, funded vacancies for consultant radiologists dropped from 518 to 152 because of financial pressures.
