Difficult for hospitals to balance books ‘while social care under pressure’

NHS hospitals will not be able to balance their books until problems in social care are addressed, health experts have warned.

The Health Foundation said the gap in social care funding should be addressed in next month’s Budget.

The charity said failure to invest in social care is a “false economy” which is resulting in inefficiency in the NHS.

The comments come as NHS hospitals in England reported a deficit of £886 million in the first nine months of the financial year.

Anita Charlesworth, director of research and economics at the Health Foundation, said: “More than half of NHS providers can’t balance their books.

“The NHS is locked is a vicious cycle of financial deficits, cost-cutting and inefficiency.

“Hospitals will find it very difficult to balance their books while social care remains under such intense pressure.

“Days lost to social care related delayed transfers have risen sharply, which detrimentally impacts on patients, staff and budgets.

“There is very little prospect of turning round hospital finances this year, but lessons must be learnt.

“The failure to invest in social care is a false economy, resulting in avoidable waste and inefficiency in the NHS.

“More importantly, it is having a negative impact on the quality of care provided to vulnerable older people.

“Both the NHS and patients need the almost £2 billion gap in social care funding for next financial year to be filled in the Budget next month.

“The additional powers to raise council tax will broadly cover the extra costs caused by the introduction of the National Living Wage, but do not address the underlying pressures in a service which has seen substantial cuts to eligibility while the number of older people needing care has risen.

“A significant increase in social care funding for next financial year is vital if this winter’s financial and access problems in the NHS are not be repeated.”

Sally Gainsbury, senior policy analyst at the Nuffield Trust, added: “This massive deficit comes even though NHS trusts have delivered very high levels of cost cutting: £2.9bn in the first nine months of this financial year alone.

“Providers are being asked to make these cost cuts more than 50% faster than recent reviews for the Government have found possible.

“So it is little wonder that key targets such as A&E and operation waiting times are suffering.

“As we warned would happen, the NHS now appears to be locked into systematic overspending – a function of the simple fact that funding is rising significantly slower than patient numbers.

“If this continues, we have calculated that by next year all parts of the service will be in deficit.

“There is a widening gap between what we are asking the NHS to do and what we are funding it to do.”

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