Warning of ‘hardest decade ever’ for NHS

Three leading think-tanks have said that the NHS is enduring its hardest decade since its inception, with nine in ten hospitals in England expected to overspend their budgets this year.

Experts from the Nuffield Trust, the King’s Fund and the Health Foundation have put forward gloomy estimations before the Government’s spending review this autumn.

The Government is bound to a pledge made in its manifesto to increase spending on health by £8bn a year by 2020. Chief economist at the Health Foundation Anita Charlesworth, said that this sum amounted to an annual increase of 1.3 per cent in real terms, which means that this decade will see the lowest growth real-term since the establishment of the NHS in 1948.

Ms Charlesworth said “It is that moment before the train crashes where everything is oddly calm. The thing we are all worried about is that there is this massive gulf between the reality for hospitals, and a ‘top of the system’ that is still talking about priorities that are about additional spending pressures and isn’t actually articulating a plan for how on earth we get through the next 18 months.”

Cost pressures on the NHS are increasing by approximately four per cent a year, driven mostly by an ageing and growing population.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, speaking to the Health Select Committee yesterday, said that economic pressures on the NHS were “the worst they’ve ever been in its history”, adding, however, that he was positive that the health service would finish the year with a stabilised budget.

Chief Executive of the King’s Fund Chris Ham, said “The deteriorating state of NHS finances is leading to panic and denial in Whitehall. Panic best describes the mood in the Department of Health, where the prospect of a £2bn deficit among providers is of growing concern.”

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Posted by Karen Motley, Paralegal, Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (karenmotley@chadlaw.co.uk ), Medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.

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