CCG alert: productivity

Showing posts with label productivity. Show all posts

15 April 2019

NHS productivity is measured by comparing growth in the outputs produced by the NHS to growth in the inputs used to produce them. NHS outputs include the amount and quality of care provided to patients. Inputs include the number of doctors, nurses and support staff providing care, the equipment and clinical supplies used, and the hospitals and other premises where care is provided.
The report includes costs of different types NHS provider outputs (eg GP consultations, outpatient activity, inpatient activity) taken from a range of sources, and inputs in terms of spend and NHS staff numbers.
Changes in unit costs for consultation types in primary care are indicated in table 30 (p35).

The General Practice Effectiveness Tool (GPET), developed through workshops with GPs, practice staff and public, comprises four performance measures (clinical care, practice management, patient focus and external focus).
Use of the tool was found to moderately improve effectiveness in 38 practices, particularly in the areas of practice management and patient experience.

Following wide ranging engagement this review has identified critical and unwarranted variations in all key resource areas across mental health and community health services. The review estimates that elimination of unwarranted variation could save the NHS nearly £1 billion in efficiencies by 2020/21.
Four key areas are staff, contract specification, technology and delivery. Structural issues identified include delayed transfer of care, wound care, community hospitals, Lifetime healthcare costs and Integrated care.

Contents

This report explores how health care innovations currently employed in the UK and abroad could increase productivity and reduce costs.
It showcases seven global and UK-based innovations with a strong evidence base of demonstrable success, and calculates the savings that could be achieved by implementing them across the UK. All case studies relate to out of hospital care.
Analysis of these innovations indicate that, whilst the UK is well placed to innovate to improve health outcomes and reduce costs, the UK is often not doing enough with the tools at its disposal.

This report analyses the commissioning budget and finances of the NHS, NHS providers performance and the consultant productivity based on hospital activity at the provider level. It draws on their accounts from 2009/10 to 2015/16 and linking this to wider NHS data.
The analyses show that NHS providers saw relatively little of the income growth for the NHS as a whole, and that productivity for consultants and the wider workforce in acute hospitals has been falling.
Predictors of consultant productivity were found to include skill mix, hospital characteristics and regional variation.
Conclusions

"The last six years have seen big changes in the composition of the NHS workforce – fast growth in consultant numbers but little growth in nurses. Meanwhile, productivity for consultants and the wider workforce in acute hospitals has been falling. This does not mean that staff are not working incredibly hard – they are. But people work in teams and in systems. No matter how hard people work, if they are not supported properly by these systems they will not be as productive as they could be, which is bad for finances and bad for staff morale. There may be good reasons for the growth in numbers of consultants, but the NHS is not using their skills well – as the fall in consultant productivity shows."