20 April 2011
The NHS funding squeeze has begun to kick in, pushing hospital waiting times up to a three-year high, according to a report from the King’s Fund published today.
The first of a new series of quarterly updates from the think-tank, How is the NHS performing?, draws together the views of 26 NHS finance directors and performance data from Whitehall.
With the health service expected to make £20bn of efficiency savings by 2015, most finance directors were confident they had met their own savings targets for 2010/11. But more than two-thirds warned that they were unlikely to meet their 2011/12 efficiency targets and almost half said wards would have to close and services be cut in order to make the savings.
At the same time, the think-tank found that almost 15% of hospital inpatients waited more than 18 weeks for treatment in February this year, the highest level since April 2008. The proportion of patients waiting more than four hours for accident and emergency services rose sharply at the end of last year, reaching its highest level since 2004/05.
John Appleby, chief economist at the King’s Fund, said there was ‘significant concern among NHS finance directors – who are well placed to report on the stresses in the system – about the prospects for the year ahead’.
He added: ‘With hospital waiting times rising, the NHS faces a considerable challenge in maintaining performance as the financial squeeze begins to bit.’
Only six of the finance directors, who came from acute, mental health and primary care trusts across England, identified back-office efficiencies as the main way of boosting productivity and saving money. Most called for the government to be ‘more realistic’ about the challenges involved in finding the savings needed.
