“Patients deserve safe care delivered by properly trained NHS staff, not AI. Technology should support NHS staff, not replace them.”
By Keep Our NHS Public
The Government is planning to scale back NHS recruitment and replace vital healthcare roles with AI technology to cut costs. This could leave patients facing fewer trained staff, unsafe care, and longer waits.
Keep Our NHS Public is calling for proper investment in NHS staffing, not cuts misrepresented as ‘modernisation’.
Patients deserve safe care delivered by properly trained NHS staff, not AI. Technology should support NHS staff, not replace them.
We call on the new Health Secretary James Murray to reject these dangerous proposals and commit to properly funding and expanding the NHS workforce. A serious evidence-based workforce plan that looks in detail at future health care needs is urgently required.
Keep Our NHS Public (KONP) is deeply troubled by reports that the NHS in England is preparing to slash recruitment, and instead rely increasingly on artificial intelligence to replace NHS staff.
While technology can play a useful supporting role within healthcare, AI must never become an excuse for cutting staff numbers or replacing human judgment and experience.
With 3 million people on sick leave, the answer for a thriving economy is a healthy workforce and investment in public infrastructure, not untested schemes to cut spending. As is clear to most in society, except apparently those in Westminster, austerity has been an abject failure. It is time for a real break from the policies of the last Health Minister, not more of the same.
The NHS should not be treated as a burden on the economy but as one of the country’s most valuable social and economic assets that is there to improve our lives and free us from the fear of sickness bringing financial ruin.
The answer to the current NHS crisis is sustained public investment to meet need, democratic accountability, safe staffing levels and a renewed commitment to healthcare as a public service run for patients.
We urge the Government and new Health Secretary James Murray to reject these dangerous cost-cutting proposals and commit instead to rebuilding a properly staffed, publicly accountable NHS that puts patient care before austerity and partnership with private corporate interests, recognising that the economy must be made to work to improve the lives of ordinary people.
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- This article was originally published on Keep Our NHS Public’s website.
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