Efficient NHS will stay out of debt, says Johnson
pharmafile | August 30, 2007 | News story | |Â Â Â
Health secretary Alan Johnson has confidently predicted that the NHS will not slip back into debt this year – and in years to come – after newly released figures claimed a growing overall cash surplus.
The government has adopted the quarterly reporting for the NHS from today, continuing its push to a more transparent and business-like approach to health service finances.
The first of these reports is not, however, forthcoming with figures from the first quarter, but only produces a forecast figure for the whole 2007/8 financial year.
It predicts a surplus of nearly £1 billion (£983 million) which represents 1.3% of the total NHS budget. If the health service does achieve this total, it will have almost doubled the surplus achieved in the last financial year, achieved after much belt-tightening and cuts across the service.
Commenting on the figures Health Secretary Alan Johnson said: "Today's financial forecasts show the NHS is now on a sustainable financial footing."
The report also provides an update on key targets on waiting times, tackling infection and health inequalities.
He continued: "The NHS is becoming more efficient freeing up resources to be spent on the major concerns of patients, such as tackling hospital bugs and improving access to local doctors. These figures show that any changes to NHS services are driven by the need to save lives, not money."
The report claims the NHS is hitting many of its patient care targets, including waiting times for outpatients, GP referrals for suspected cancer, and A&E and ambulance waits.
One of the biggest challenges facing NHS trusts over the next year is the target of ensuring no patient waits longer than 18 weeks from referral to treatment.
The government wants all trusts to achieve this target by December 2008, and claimed in July this year that nearly half of all patients are already being treated within this timeframe.
Independent health analysts the King's Fund says the importance placed on the target suggests it will be met. It also says the 18-week target represents more joined-up thinking than previous piecemeal targets, but warned that the target could still distort clinical priorities in the health service.
Commenting on the figures, Dr Gill Morgan, chief executive of the NHS Confederation said: "The NHS has come a long way financially in the last year from net deficit to net surplus. This is a credit to the hard work of NHS organisations up and down the country who have done an excellent job turning around the fortunes of many individual trusts in financial difficulty. It is in the interest of patients and staff to have a financially stable NHS which can avoid the boom-and-bust of the past.
"It must, however, be remembered that an overall surplus does not mean that every organisation is in balance. A small minority of around 6% of NHS organisations face very real financial challenges as they try to balance their income and expenditure."
Morgan said achieving a surplus had been difficult in the past because of "past financial constraints" and the continuing complexity of the NHS.
"A small surplus or deficit of 1% either way would be deemed sensible in many other organisations and industries, yet the NHS often finds itself criticised for not ending each quarter exactly on budget," she said.
