Hospital ‘productivity’ the key to savings

In a fascinating keynote on the second day of Healthcare Estates 2015, Lord Carter, chair of the NHS Procurement and Efficiency Board, reported on some of the key findings of he and his team in looking recently at the ‘operational productivity’ of 22 NHS Trusts across England to identify how they and their counterpart Trusts elsewhere could improve such productivity. In the process, he believes, Trusts could contribute effectively – via the resulting reduced costs – to the £5 bn in annual savings by 2019/2020 that Lord Carter believes are possible ‘given political and managerial commitment to take the necessary steps and funding to achieve these efficiencies’. HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports.

Over recent months – against a backdrop of continuing tight public finances –the question of how healthcare facilities UK-wide can identify areas where cost savings can be made and productivity improved without impacting on patient care, or indeed the quality of the patient environment, has been ever-present. With an ageing demographic, a rise in lifestyle’-induced’ illnesses, continuing pressures on A&E departments to the extent that some say the days of ‘seasonal peaks’ are over, and the NHS charged with achieving significant cost savings, Lord Carter’s review of the current ‘operational productivity’ of 22 hospital Trusts across England came at an apposite time, and sought to identify where the greatest opportunities for both ‘improved productivity’ and cost savings might lie. 

Lord Carter said, in the forward to the publication that set out his team’s initial findings – Review of Operational Productivity in NHS providers. Interim Report,1 (published last June), that he believed there was a need for ‘a model’ to ‘define what an efficient NHS hospital looks like’. He explained: “A ‘model hospital’ can show how good clinical practice, workforce management, and careful spending, lead to measurable efficiency improvements whilst retaining or improving quality.”