The NHS has more funding and more staff than pre-pandemic.
Hospitals in England have 16% more consultants and 19% more
nurses than in 2019. But those additional resources are not
translating into a commensurate increase in the number of
patients receiving treatment. On the face of it, that implies
that the system has become less productive – and alarmingly so.
But this week, Amanda Pritchard, NHS England Chief Executive,
suggested to the Health and Social Care Select Committee that
‘there is a misunderstanding at the moment of the state of
productivity in the NHS’ and that although ‘this doesn’t mean
there aren’t still productivity challenges’, these might be much
smaller than often suggested.
It is certainly true that measuring productivity in the health
service is wrought with difficulty, and the simple approach of
using the number of patients treated as a measure of output is
imperfect. But despite this, in our view, the available evidence
is clear that NHS hospitals have a productivity problem.
Max Warner, Research Economist at IFS, said:
‘Funding and staffing numbers for NHS hospitals have increased
sharply, but the number of patients being treated has not
increased to anything like the same degree. Accounting for an
array of other factors – some outside the NHS’s control – might
explain part of the apparent productivity shortfall, but there
remains a shortfall nonetheless. There are signs of success in
some parts of the system – in the number of GP appointments and
in the number of diagnostic tests, for example – but the
available evidence still points to a clear productivity problem
within NHS hospitals.’
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