£2bn more needed next year for NHS England

Health think tank the King’s Fund has said that £2bn should be provided to NHS England next year.

The call for extra money has come at a time when the deficit is increasing and performance is deteriorating, with targets being breached for cancer treatment, hospital operations and accident and emergency waiting times.

In the last few years, the NHS budget has been increasing by an average of 0.7% a year. Next year it will rise to £115bn, but the think tank say another £2bn is needed.

According to the King’s Fund, a requirement to invest in more staff after the Stafford Hospital scandal, combined with increased demand, had pushed significant parts of the NHS into the red.

Chief executive of the King’s Fund Chris Ham, said “There is scope to improve productivity in the NHS, but this will not be enough to respond to unprecedented pressures on budgets and meet rising demand for services.

“Unless more money is found a financial crisis is inevitable next year and patients will bear the costs as waiting times rise and quality of care deteriorates.”

The four hour accident and emergency waiting time target has been missed since the summer almost on a weekly basis, which performance for this time of year at its lowest level for a decade.

Howard Catton, of the Royal College of Nursing, said that a key issue that needed to be tackled was the “runaway spending on agency staff.”

Mr Hatton said “It is a direct consequence of short-term workforce planning and a failure to train and retain enough nurses, which has forced desperate trusts to spend over-the-odds just to maintain safe staffing levels.”

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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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