13.02.11
NHS productivity ‘has increased’ over past decade
NHS productivity has risen in the last decade – not fallen as the Government has suggested – according to a new paper published in the Lancet.
Nick Black, professor of health services research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, suggests that taxpayers get more for their money, undermining one of the Government’s key arguments for the reforms.
This challenges the view that productivity in the NHS dropped by 1.4% per year, despite the budget increasing from £60bn in 2000 to £102bn in 2010.
Black questioned the analysis conducted to produce these results. The ONS compared public expenditure with how much patients used the health service, and what the outcomes were. However this did not reflect the increase in life expectancy or fall in the number of people dying in specialist procedures. Patient experience also improved in the NHS.
He said: “Rather than declining, the productivity of the NHS has probably improved over the past decade. To justify the reforms to the NHS that the Conservative party wanted to introduce, the claim of declining NHS productivity was necessary.
“The myth is that lots of extra money went into the NHS and productivity went down. Easy to see why if you pay a surgeon 30% more and he still works the same number of hours, clearly you think productivity went down. But this neglects quality improvements which you can measure.”
Health minister Simon Burns responded: “We have always been clear that productivity in the NHS needs to improve and are committed to better outcomes for patients across the country.
“We are investing an extra £12.5bn in the NHS, but we want to make every penny count. We know the NHS can meet this challenge – we have already made £7bn in efficiency savings over the last 18 months as performance has improved: record low infection rates, mixed-sex wards down by over 90% and people waiting over a year reduced by half.”
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