Critical state of NHS finances

IN indicating that the majority of Britain’s austerity savings have still to be accrued, George Osborne’s Budget was a gloomy foretaste of today’s Public Accounts Committee report that reveals the critical state of the National Health Service’s finances as it comes to terms with the fallout from the Mid Staffordshire scandal.

While official figures show that the Department of Health just about hits its £5.9bn savings target in 2011-12, Parliament’s watchdog clearly has some doubts about the authenticity of this claim before pointing out that the most significant factor was the freezing of staff wages. Given that the worst is still to come, just like the wider economy, if the Department of Health is to make its intended savings of £20bn by 2014-15, the resolve of Ministers will be severely tested when the consequences of this spending squeeze clashes with the best interests of patients amid growing evidence that points to the rationing of treatments like cataract surgery and hip replacements.

It is clear that every last pound is going to have to be spent more wisely, and the NHS can ill-afford any of the decisions which saw North Yorkshire’s pioneering “telehealth” system become such an expensive folly.

For, if money continues to be squandered so unwisely, patients are unlikely to be sympathetic when their own care is scaled back because of financial pressures – or when NHS decision-makers actually recommend the closure of hospitals or A&E units on cost grounds.

It is naive to think that this will not happen – or that the Government will bow to public pressure when such announcements are made.

As the influential and respected Public Accounts Committee makes clear today, Ministers actually need to start making the case now if they’re to have any chance of winning over public opinion in order to make the necessary efficiencies. Yet the reality is that such a strategy would be politically disastrous so close to the next election.

The consequence? The NHS lurching, just like the economy, from one crisis to another while the public suffers. Is this really the  best that the country can hope for?