In a new report, ‘Stretched to the Limit: Tackling the NHS Productivity Challenge’ NHS Providers notes that Trusts are making great strides in recovering services, including carrying out more diagnostic tests than ever before, and bringing down the number of people experiencing the longest waits. However, a challenging picture remains across all services.
The report explores the main barriers Trusts are facing as they seek to recover performance and improve productivity. NHS Providers also considers the financial impact of the current pressures and the scale of the efficiency ask, which, according to 89% of Trust leaders responding to the survey, is even more stretching than in 2022/23.
Among the key points revealed in this report:
• Trust leaders are significantly concerned about capacity to meet demand for service, staff morale and burnout
• Prolonged industrial action poses a major operational constraint to recovering performance, and a significant financial risk to Trusts
• Trusts continue to carry significant levels of risk across their estates – with 73% of those survey strongly disagreeing, or disagreeing, that they have access to sufficient capital funding over 2023/24 to address capital maintenance backlog
• Increased patient acuity, longer average length of stay and the need for investment in beds in community and social care settings are limiting timely discharge of patients.
NHS Providers says the survey underlines that it will be very difficult for the NHS to deliver the government’s overall performance ask, protect quality of care and deliver unprecedented efficiencies. Whilst Trusts are able to take action to resolve some productivity constraints, wider barriers relating to workforce, bed and service capacity, patient acuity, social care capacity and industrial action require government support to address.
NHS Providers suggests in the short- and medium-term this requires expanding capacity in community settings, delivering the long-term workforce plan, resolving industrial action, enabling fully digitally connected estates, and improving the coverage and quality of productivity data.
In the long-term, the government must enable a step change in operational and strategic capital investments to enable material improvements in productivity growth. This point was also emphasised in the NHS Long-Term Workforce Plan. It must also enable the NHS to invest in management capacity alongside the clinical workforce to help deliver operational efficiencies, and provide a sustainable solution to social care capacity.
