13.10.16
NHS in Wales faces ‘tough future’ with severe funding shortfall
Welsh NHS services face an even harsher funding challenge than in England, a new report from the Health Foundation has found.
‘The Path to Sustainability’ says that if funding for the NHS in Wales increases at around 0.7% a year, a similar rate to England, it will face a funding shortfall of £700m by 2019-20.
In order to address this, NHS Wales will need to achieve a 1.5% growth in efficiency savings a year, higher than the current rate of 1%.
Anita Charlesworth, director of research and economics at the Health Foundation, said: “The next few years will be tough for the NHS in Wales. Immediate and sustained action is needed to protect patient care, but long-term sustainability is possible.”
She said this would require not only an “unrelenting focus” on efficiency savings, but also increased funding, service reform and support for social care.
Speaking in front of the Health Select Committee earlier this week, Chris Hopson, the chief executive of NHS Providers, warned that the NHS can no longer “square the circle” of increasing demand and declining funding.
Overall, the Welsh NHS will need a funding increase of 2.2% a year from 2019-20 to 2030-31 to keep its finances sustainable, which the report said could be cast into uncertainty by the economic consequences of leaving the European Union.
It also said that keeping finances sustainable will rely on keeping the 1% pay cap, which trade unions are campaigning against on the grounds that it breaches the national living wage.
The Health Foundation added that maintaining a sustainable NHS would depend on the quality and motivation of the workforce, so “a strong focus on workforce policy” would be needed to try to offset the effects of the pay cap.
According to the latest report, pressures on the Welsh NHS are higher than the rest of the country partly because it has an older population, with the number of over-65s expected to grow by 28.5% between 2015 and 2030. The Health Foundation estimated pressures on the Welsh social care services will grow by 4.2% a year, higher than the rest of the country, which would add to the pressures on the health service.
The CQC’s State of Care report, also published today, warned that adult social care is “at a tipping point”, with failures in care making the problems affecting the NHS worse.
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