Hunt sets out plans for expanded NHS budget
pharmafile | December 3, 2014 | News story | Sales and Marketing | Budget, Hunt, NHS, UK, election, health, king's fund
Health secretary Jeremy Hunt has laid out his plans for the future of the NHS in a speech to parliament, as the financial pressure on the health service continues to increase.
His statement comes in the wake of the government announcing an extra £2 billion of funding for the health service last week, after healthcare think tank the King’s Fund said it was needed to ‘avert a financial crisis’.
This is on top of the £10 billion savings plan the health secretary unveiled last month. In expanding on some of the points made in that speech, Hunt says there are four pillars to his plan.
The first pillar is to ensure that the economy can pay for the growing costs of the NHS. This is, according to Hunt, without the tax on people’s homes suggested by some.
Instead, ‘prudent economic policies’ will allow £1.7 billion of funding to support and modernise the delivery of frontline care, and £1 billion of funding over 4 years for investment in new primary care infrastructure.
“The NHS itself can contribute to [a] strong economy in a number of ways. It is helping people with mental health conditions get back to work by offering talking therapies to 100,000 more people every year than 4 years ago.
“But the NHS can also attract jobs to the UK by playing a pivotal role in our life sciences industry. We have already attracted £3.5 billion of investment and 11,000 jobs in the last 3 years, as well as announcing plans to be the first country in the world to decode 100,000 research-ready whole genomes.”
As part of the second pillar, the health secretary says he wants to change the NHS’ models of care to be more suitable for an ageing population. In the process he hopes save money by focussing more on prevention of conditions like diabetes and arthritis, which often require expensive hospital treatment.
This will involve a £1 billion investment fund in primary and community care facilities over the next four years.
Efficiency and culture
‘Embracing innovation and eliminating waste’ forms the third pillar. Expanding on his earlier promise to make the NHS ‘paperless’ by 2018, the health secretary says that £1.5 billion of the extra £1.7 billion revenue funding will go on additional frontline activity.
But to access this funding hospitals will have to provide plans “showing how they will be more efficient and sustainable in the year ahead and deliver their commitment to a paperless NHS by 2018”.
Speaking about the fourth and final pillar of ‘culture’, Hunt says: “We can find the money, we can support new models of care, we can embrace innovation but if we get the culture wrong, if we fail to nurture dignity, respect and compassionate care for every single NHS patient then we are betraying the values that underpin the work done every day by doctors and nurses throughout the NHS.”
In the next few months the government will be “announcing new measures to improve training in safety for new doctors and nurses and responding to recommendations made in the follow-up Francis report tackling issues around whistleblowing, and the ability to speak out easily about poor care”.
More funding needed
Responding to the health secretary’s statement, chief executive of the King’s Fund Chris Ham says: “The additional funding for the NHS confirmed will provide a substantial boost for front line services and is an important step forward, especially with the public finances still under significant pressure.
“It underlines how much the debate has moved on over the last few weeks, with the case for more investment in the NHS now accepted by all the main political parties.” He also cautions that more will be needed in the future, however.
“Even if the very challenging estimates for productivity improvements it outlined can be achieved, an additional £8 billion a year in funding will be needed by 2020.
“So this must be the first installment in a sustained funding increase during the next parliament.”
George Underwood
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