The “big conversation” ministers plan around the NHS 10 year plan urgently needs to involve wide public involvement in setting out the values that should apply when prioritising resources and how competing values should be balanced. A blog from me here www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/he... (4/4)
Following a speech this week by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Sally Gainsbury reflects on how there are no easy answers to questions about prioritising scarce health care resource...
We cant avoid these difficult questions about how to fairly allocate scarce resources by pretending we can instead just increase spending: no matter how much we do that, we will always want more from the NHS than it can provide (3/4) >>
Wes Streeting this week suggested that one priority for him was getting “sick Brits back to work”. Bevan similarly hoped the NHS could pay for itself and was sorely disappointed (2/4)>>
We’ve avoided the question of what a fair and just NHS should prioritise for far too long. In the absence of clarity, those with the greatest resources and loudest voices often prevail. Not just in the waiting room, but also in setting the agenda (1/4) >>
No I don’t. I would love to be involved in a study that did explore (assuming - perhaps wrongly - someone isn’t already)
It feels like it might be an example where something available privately leads to increased demand on the nhs but where the trade off considerations have completely side stepped the process we have via NICE
Really interesting paper. I do worry that a certain wearable(? That seems to be stapled into the arm) heavily marketed to middle age women for tracking metabolic data will both drive up demand in a relatively low need section of that demographic and (partly through that) exacerbate inequalities
More on the last decade of NHS funding here www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/resource/nhs... [this piece last updated in May uses slightly old GDP deflators, which put the gap between this year’s budget and pre pandemic plans at £1.8bn]]
This updated explainer from Sally Gainsbury looks back over the past 10 years to show how repeated spending increases on the NHS pushed above what governments planned and expected.
£6 extra per person isnt much when we consider the increases in activity promised at the election, most notably on waiting times. There’s also in the region of £3bn unfunded staff pay commitments to come good on
Long term av real terms growth rate is ~3.5%. 1st 2 yrs of covid it surged far above that. But then cut in 22/23. By 23/24 spending was pretty much back down to pre Covid plans and this year its budget is £1.6bn BELOW where it would have been had those plans been rolled forward one more year