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Back-office efficiencies could save over £400m a year, claims NHSI

Improving the efficiency of NHS corporate services costs could save the health service over £400m in the next three years if all trusts performed as well as the average, NHS Improvement (NHSI) hhas claimed.

By looking into corporate support activities, which are responsible for services like finance, information management and technology (IMT), and legal and HR within the NHS, the organisation was able to see that crucial savings could be delivered if these services were run more smoothly.

For instance, the regulator’s report found that despite the average costs for a payslip across the NHS being reported as £4.28, over 25% of trusts were actually paying over £5 each, whilst other outliers, were forking out over £10 per payslip.

If all trusts could hit the average target for back-office funding, NHSI estimates that around £422m per year could be saved for the NHS, which is currently scrambling to find extra cash in as many areas as possible. 

The disparity between the most and least efficiently run corporate services across the NHS was also marked, as NHSI announced that the top 10% most efficient trusts spend as little as £2.80 on corporate services per £100 of funding for patient care, whilst the 10% least efficient trusts were spending just under three times that amount, an average of £7.50 per £100 of patient care funds.

NHSI’s report, which analysed data from 230 trusts, also highlighted the need for hospitals to work more collaboratively in providing corporate services as larger organisations were found to be more efficient than smaller ones, saying that it was willing to help trusts to collaborate with their neighbours to boost efficiencies in these services.

Jeremy Marlow, executive director for operational productivity at NHSI, said: “The closer you look at the NHS the more you see variation in what things cost and the knock on effect this can have on hospitals and patients is huge.

“We are working hard to support NHS providers to identify where they can improve so they can use their resources as effectively as possible, so that the service can continue to provide quality and sustainable care.”

Last year, the regulator outlined priority benchmark areas for STP consolidated business plans, which, at the time, included an evaluation of the level of support all trusts and STPs required to consolidate back office functions and pathology services.

Following his productivity report, which highlighted major variation across trusts, Lord Carter old us that there is still a “significant potential saving if back-office services and pathology services are consolidated on a regional basis”.

Marlow also added that the regulator wants to support trusts to have high-quality, efficient corporate services they can rely on and “we are asking them to work together to become more efficient, so that the NHS as a whole can benefit”.

NHE has contacted NHS Confed and NHS Providers for comment, but at the time of publication had not received a response.

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