The shadow health secretary said he had heard stories of “1980s technology” holding staff back, and doctors being “armed with pagers when the rest of the world ditched them in the last century”.
In one example, an NHS surgeon had “accessed a PDF file with his patients’ notes only to find they had been scanned in the wrong order, meaning he had to print them all out and reorganise them to get the information he needed”.
In another, a leading radiologist had detailed how “he has to enter seven passwords just to get the information he needs” for every patient he sees.
“It costs hundreds of thousands of pounds to train a doctor. Wasting so much of your time on these inefficiencies is a waste in every sense,” said Mr Streeting.
NHS staff have also complained about tickbox exercises and mandatory training, including modules on equality, diversity and inclusion, which take doctors up to an hour to complete each of 33 sessions required.
On Thursday, NHS England outlined plans to cut these and give doctors back a whole working day as part of measures to improve their working lives.