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The NHS has a staffing crisis.聽

With 1.3m staff across the UK, the health service is the fifth-largest employer in the world, but in England 96,000 posts - one-in-twelve - are vacant.

It's one of the key reasons hospitals, GPs and associated services are failing to keep up with demand.

The UK's planned departure from the European Union has increased staffing anxiety among hospital trusts and health analysts who fear it will make filling posts harder in future.

Around 13% of NHS staff are from overseas, with at least 212 nationalities represented in the workforce, with 5.5%, around 66,000 people, drawn from the EU.

Crucially they are currently free to work in the UK without a visa and only need to demonstrate they have the required professional standards.

That will change if Boris Johnson's Withdrawal Agreement is implemented, a fact confirmed in a Conservative election pledge to introduce a new "NHS Visa".

Health secretary Matt Hancock says it will "make it easier for us to hire the finest doctors and nurses from other nations to come and work in the NHS."

But will it?

Visas will certainly get cheaper. The policy proposes cutting fees from the current rate of £928 to £464.

Applicants will still have to pay the £400 a-year "healthcare surcharge" to cover the cost of any treatment they need, but they will be able to pay via salary deductions rather than in a lump sum.

Applicants will be "fast-tracked" and get a decision within two weeks, and receive "preferential treatment" in the form of extra points in the "Australian-style points-based immigration system" the government says it will introduce, but is yet to spell out in detail.

For around 88,000 overseas staff drawn from outside the EU the changes will be welcome. If the Home Office can deliver - and it has a patchy record of managing change - visas will become easier, cheaper and quicker to process.

But for EU nationals receiving permission to work in the UK will become harder, more expensive, and take longer. They and potential employers will switch from facing no immigration restrictions to the same visa regime as everyone else.

However, Irish citizens, 13,000 of whom work in the NHS in England, are exempt from the new system because they are covered by the bilateral UK-Ireland Common Travel Area Agreement.

Health analysts say the announcement lacks sufficient detail for them to understand whether it will really address the workforce challenge.

"I think the biggest concern about the points-based system is that even after today's announcement we still don't really know how it's going to work," said Mark Dayan, policy analyst at the Nuffield Trust.

"We don't know who qualifies for it. And we don't even know what the criteria will really be. So it's not completely clear whether or not today's announcement will mean that it's easier than it is now to get staff from outside the EU.

"It doesn't sound as if it were easier to get staff in than it is now from within the EU. So it's that lack of detail that's a major concern."

The announcement is also silent on the crucial area of social care, a sector that employs more than 1.5m people, a sector that faces arguably greater challenges than the NHS and has a direct impact on the health service.

Many of them are low-paid and classified as low-skilled. Around 17% of social care staff are from overseas but there is no indication whether they will receive preferential access to visas.

Until that, and much more about the government's vision for post-Brexit immigration is clear, it is impossible to judge whether this policy will ultimately help or hinder.

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