Comparing trusts on new productivity metric is misleading, experts warn

Recent productivity improvements will be hard to sustain in future years, experts have warned, as they said newly published NHS England data fails to show which trusts are the most productive.

The Department for Health and Social Care announced last month that productivity at acute and specialist trusts had grown by 2.7% in 2024-25 compared to the previous year – exceeding the 2% target set by government.

The productivity measure, which compares cost-weighted activity growth against real-terms resource growth to give a “productivity growth estimate”, is also one of three finance measures used to determine which segment of the NHS Oversight Framework providers are assigned.

The data, which compares 2023-24 with 2024-25, has last month published what effectively amounts to a productivity “league table”.

HSJ has learned some trusts, including two specialist providers which appeared to be the worst performers when the data was first published last month, have raised concerns to NHSE that their figures were inaccurate.

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Source: HSJ, 7 October 2025

Further reading on the hub:

• Waste not, harm not: The moral case for efficiency and productivity in healthcare