By David Williams
15 October 2009
Political commitments to safeguard health spending could have an adverse effect on social care budgets, the director of NHS finance has warned.
Bob Alexander told CIPFA’s annual health care conference on October 14 that although the overall health budget should be hit less hard than other Whitehall departments, it was significant that more commitments were being made for the NHS than for social care.
Pointing to the ageing population that will put all health care services under increasing strain in years to come, Alexander said: ‘Health and social care will be under the same sort of pressure at the same time. And we know in the past social care hasn’t done quite as well as health in funding protection and funding growth.’
He acknowledged the ongoing debate around a green paper on social care, including proposals for a National Care Service, but added: ‘Nobody talks about protecting social care.’
Alexander suggested that with both the government and Opposition naming the NHS as a spending priority, health chiefs could still expect to get ‘better than average’ settlements compared with the rest of the public sector.
He told delegates it was likely that primary care trust settlements for 2010/11 – which allow for an average 5.5% growth – would not be recalculated. However, he hinted that salaries would come under increasing scrutiny. ‘Inevitably people are thinking about it,’ he said.
Alexander told the conference that finance directors would have to make trusts more efficient and more innovative to generate enough cash to maintain improvements to services.
Speaking at the same conference, Andy McKeon, managing director of health at the Audit Commission, said finance and efficiency needed to become the business of everyone in an organisation.
He recommended that more control over budgets be devolved to frontline staff, adding: ‘The heroic model of the finance director will not work.’
McKeon also told Public Finance that finance departments must gain control of productivity, which an Office of National Statistics study showed had fallen across the NHS despite investment increasing over the past decade.
15 October 2009
Political commitments to safeguard health spending could have an adverse effect on social care budgets, the director of NHS finance has warned.
Bob Alexander told CIPFA’s annual health care conference on October 14 that although the overall health budget should be hit less hard than other Whitehall departments, it was significant that more commitments were being made for the NHS than for social care.
Pointing to the ageing population that will put all health care services under increasing strain in years to come, Alexander said: ‘Health and social care will be under the same sort of pressure at the same time. And we know in the past social care hasn’t done quite as well as health in funding protection and funding growth.’
He acknowledged the ongoing debate around a green paper on social care, including proposals for a National Care Service, but added: ‘Nobody talks about protecting social care.’
Alexander suggested that with both the government and Opposition naming the NHS as a spending priority, health chiefs could still expect to get ‘better than average’ settlements compared with the rest of the public sector.
He told delegates it was likely that primary care trust settlements for 2010/11 – which allow for an average 5.5% growth – would not be recalculated. However, he hinted that salaries would come under increasing scrutiny. ‘Inevitably people are thinking about it,’ he said.
Alexander told the conference that finance directors would have to make trusts more efficient and more innovative to generate enough cash to maintain improvements to services.
Speaking at the same conference, Andy McKeon, managing director of health at the Audit Commission, said finance and efficiency needed to become the business of everyone in an organisation.
He recommended that more control over budgets be devolved to frontline staff, adding: ‘The heroic model of the finance director will not work.’
McKeon also told Public Finance that finance departments must gain control of productivity, which an Office of National Statistics study showed had fallen across the NHS despite investment increasing over the past decade.
