NHS faces 10 years of savings, say managers
pharmafile | March 22, 2012 | News story | Sales and Marketing | NHS, QIPP, Stout, reforms, think tank
The NHS will have to make £40 billion in savings by 2020, meaning budgets will be tighter for longer.
The health service has already been told that it must find £20 billion in savings by 2015, but the NHS Confederation said an additional £20 billion would have to be found in the five years after that.
This original plans to find £20 billion by 2015 falls under the government’s QIPP agenda, which is seeking to make efficiency savings by improving quality, innovation productivity and prevention within the NHS.
But this new warning from NHS managers goes well beyond the government’s original QIPP plans, and could impact the uptake of new medicines whilst continuing the spectre of red and black listing.
David Stout, the NHS Confederation’s deputy chief executive, said: “The working assumption is that the NHS will be required to continue to produce significant savings beyond 2015. The initial £20 billion is not the end game.”
Stout said that most chief executives said it was fair to assume that another £20 billion would have to be found by 2020 to cope with rising costs from the ageing population and cost of new technologies and drugs.
“These figures show the scale of the challenge the NHS faces. We need to be honest about the impact this will have and relay to the public the changes that will be required to NHS services in order to maintain the best care for patients,” he added.
Professor Chris Ham, the chief executive of the King’s Fund think tank, echoed the Confederation’s concerns, adding that the next ten years: “promises to be an even more challenging period for the NHS than expected”.
A Department of Health source told the BBC that these figures were “at the upper end of our expectations”, adding that any extra savings would depend on a range of different scenarios depending on funding assumptions and cost pressures.
Ben Adams
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