Highlights:
- Financial pressures on the NHS are the “worst they have ever been”
- Mr Hunt mentioned on a number of occasions that he is confident that the £22bn efficiency savings planned by the end of the parliament can be achieved and that higher quality services cost less.
- The DH is currently going through an exercise across NHS to see where it can find savings. Findings will be made public in due course.
- The priorities for the Comprehensive Spending Review return around health and social care submitted by the DH are:
- Need enough to secure NHS performance basics.
- Transformation of GP – recruitment
- Mental health services
- Integration of H&SC systems
- Progress on Safer care from Mid Staffs
- There was extensive discussion around 7 day services which is predicated by three principles:
- Rethinking in terms of hospital care model
- Primary care – capacity issues
- The confusion around Urgent care
- The DH is addressing the inherent inefficiencies around not using hospitals 7 days per week and will be shortly publishing detailed plans for a staged rollout of 7 day care. The importance of Electronic Health Records to support 7 day services was mentioned several times. Centralisation of hospital services is being considered. While there will be up front costs Mr Hunt expects that these will be balanced by cost reductions resulting from higher quality services.
- “Need to change way we commission services to a population based model based on capitation fees rather than payment by results.”
- It is planned to publish data on avoidable deaths by hospital trust by Spring 2016.
- The Better Care Fund will continue as a transitional arrangement in the move to full integration of H&SC system towards fully pooled budgets, full sharing of EHR, accountable doctors across H&SC system.
- “Personal health budgets are very important part of putting patients in the driving seat of their health care.”
- Mental health - Data around waiting times for MH services is now being collected, and will be used to support the new waiting time targets for early interventions.
- Spending on management consultant staff in NHS – a freeze on spend has been introduced and approval threshold for new contracts will probably continue.
- “Too often the reflex when a difficult change needs to be made is to hire someone from outside. The best people to decide what needs to be done are the ones who work inside an organisation.”
- Procurement – there are plans to develop work by Lord Carter through sharing data on hospital spend. By the end of September trusts will be told how much they should be able to spend on supply procurement and asked to set targets for savings.
- Concerning General Practice finances, the DH is to write to every GP surgery at end of year following the spending round, outlining spending profile for GP over next few years.
