Improving efficiency, securing savings

The NHS in England could save £1 bn annually if all NHS acute Trusts achieved the median level of estates and facilities running costs, the second (and ‘final’) report by Lord Carter and his team into the ‘productivity and efficiency’ of acute NHS Trusts across England, published on 5 February, suggests. As HEJ, editor, Jonathan Baillie reports, Lord Carter’s team’s ongoing recent discussions with senior personnel working in a range of disciplines at 32 NHS Trusts – which followed dialogue with an initial 22 Trusts – identified ‘unwarranted variation’ in the use of resources ranging from staff to land and buildings on such a scale that effectively addressing this ‘variation’ could, the DH-commissioned team says, potentially reduce by £5 bn annually the NHS in England’s costs.

Building on Lord Carter’s Interim Report published in June 2015 – Review of Operational Productivity in NHS providers, Interim Report, the second and ‘final’ report, Operational productivity and performance in English NHS acute hospitals: Unwarranted variations, details the findings of Lord Carter and his team’s further extensive discussions with staff at 32 acute hospital Trusts.

The ‘final’ report’s overriding conclusion is that such is the magnitude of the ‘unwarranted variation’ in ‘productivity and efficiency’ across all the main ‘resource areas’ for NHS acute Trusts in England – including estates and facilities – that if effectively addressed, the NHS’s annual costs could be cut by £5 bn, as Lord Carter’s team indeed predicted in the Interim Report. This represents ‘a potential contribution of at least 9 per cent of the £55.6 bn spent by English acute hospitals annually’. However, in last year’s Interim Report – on which he spoke at Healthcare Estates 2015 – Lord Carter made clear that achieving such savings would require Trusts to cut costs and identify ‘efficiencies’ in a wide range of areas – including procurement, workforce management, estates and facilities, and clinical practice.