​Providers issue warning on new funding

08 July 2018 Seamus Ward

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In a report looking at how the additional funding over the next five years should be spent, the providers’ body said it wanted to inform debate by offering a realistic assessment of the costs of restoring performance across the health service.Saffron Cordery - review

It said gaps had emerged following almost a decade of austerity – such as failures to meet performance standards in A&E and elective surgery.

The report, The NHS funding settlement: recovering lost ground, sets out illustrative costs for closing financial and performance gaps. These include:

·         £950m a year for three years to recover the 18-week target for routine operations

·         Almost £900m to fund additional beds to cope safely with additional demand in A&E

·         Nearly £350m a year for the next three years to return staffing numbers in the mental health and community nursing workforce to 2010 levels

·         At least £1.2bn a year for three years to tackle high and significant backlog maintenance

·         £645m-£960m a year over three years to cover existing provider deficits

·         Up to £842m to reduce unsustainable non-recurrent savings

·         £135m to fund a 2% pay rise for doctors.

 

However, it acknowledged that there were other priorities for the new funding – including paying for rising costs and demand for care; the transformation of services; and improving cancer and mental health services. Striking the right balance between these is the key to making the new 10-year plan a success, NHS Providers added.

Saffron Cordery (pictured), deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, called for a realistic 10-year plan that had the backing of NHS frontline leaders. She said: ‘This report highlights the scale of the challenges the NHS faces in recovering the lost ground that has built up over the longest and deepest financial squeeze in NHS history.

‘It is striking how these pressures are being felt right across the system – in hospitals, mental health, community and ambulance services. We would be fooling ourselves to think there are any simple short cuts to recovery.’

NHS Confederation chief executive Niall Dickson said difficult decisions lay ahead. ‘We cannot do it all, and we need to admit that,’ he said.

‘What is more, just pumping in more resources will not work. We need transformation money aimed at boosting care in the community that will prevent unnecessary hospital admissions – only that way have we got any hope of making the system sustainable.

‘We need to move upstream; stop people falling in the river instead of fishing them out, often when it is too late,’ he added.