NHS needs smaller workforce to improve efficiency, think tank

By The Press Association26th March 2015News EnglandNews England, NHS, Workforce

The NHS would be more efficient if it had a smaller workforce, a think-tank has suggested.

Reform said that as around half the health service’s budget is spent on staffing, it could save money by having fewer people.

Its report also said that savings have been made through short term efficiencies and not sustainable reform to services.

In addition, it said there has been “disappointing progress” towards a more sustainable workforce, a more integrated health service, greater capacity in out of hospital care, greater use of alternatives to A&E, and greater competition and patient choice.

The report suggests this lack of progress is affecting NHS performance against key measures such as A&E departments where there are around 3,500 extra attendances each day compared to five years ago and waiting times have reached a decade high.

The independent think-tank said there remains “widespread hesitation within the NHS when it comes to the role of competition”.

Its report said that while a third of contracts in England have been tendered to private sector providers since April 2013, this only represented 5% of the total value of all contracts.

Reform said the level of savings made by the NHS has fallen over the past five years, which it put down to the “over-reliance on the one-off effects of cost savings rather than transformational change to the way services operate”.

It said that with hospital deficits expected to total more than £800 million in 2014/15, the NHS is “showing increasing signs of financial distress”.

Other reforms which it said had either stalled or gone into reverse were improvement in patient awareness of choice, innovation in how care is delivered, co-ordination of care, a more flexible workforce and investment in out of hospital care.

But it praised the reduction in the number of hospital beds by 5% since 2010, although it added that this rate has been slower than under previous governments.

“There is now widespread recognition that the NHS must reform further and faster than ever before,” the report concluded. “The next government must do better to accelerate NHS reform.”

Cathy Corrie, senior researcher at Reform, said: “NHS England rightly wants a more efficient NHS.

“That is difficult to square with the current increases in staff numbers and the impact this has on hospital finances.”

The number of full-time staff working in the NHS in England has increased by 2.1% since 2013, according to figures released by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) yesterday.

There were 1.2 million full-time staff at the end of September last year, with a total of 1.4 million staff in the NHS workforce when part-time workers were taken into account.