Why we need to stop talking about productivity in the NHS (19 April 2025)

Summary

Most people acknowledge the limitations of discussing productivity in healthcare. The term productivity is taken from other sectors and easily applied to industrial settings but not to the complex, patient-centred business of caring for people.

Productivity is essentially the output, in terms of quantity (and sometimes quality), produced relative to input. In its broadest sense in healthcare, productivity can encompass activities such as detecting diseases earlier, giving patients better quality of care, and getting better outcomes. However, it is often discussed in sweeping statistics and numbers.

Despite recognising the limitations of productivity as a measure, people in healthcare continue to obsess about it and we really must stop, writes Jessamy Bagenal in this Lancet commentary, giving several compelling reasons why.