NHS productivity (NHS England, 16 May 2024)

Summary

This paper was presented to the NHS England board at its public session on 16 May 2024. It discusses the effect the pandemic has had on NHS productivity with details of NHS England’s estimates for the drivers of the loss of productivity observed. It also discusses the emerging plan to improve productivity in the coming years.

Content

The paper highlights the following areas as key to improving productivity:

Operational and clinical excellence

• Building leadership and organisational capacity and capability to deliver improvement through NHS IMPACT as NHS England's single improvement approach for supporting systems and providers with continuous improvement. 
• Continuing to expand Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) methodologies, which now cover more than 40 surgical and medical workstreams.
• Driving adoption of less clinically demanding treatments, such as the world-first rollout of subcutaneous immunotherapy for lung cancer that cuts treatment time by 75%.
• Continuing to tackle interventions of limited or no clinical value through the evidence-base interventions programme, a clinically-led programme led by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges in partnership with NHS England.

A healthy motivated and engaged workforce

• Implementing the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan – listening to staff to improve, flexible working practices, optimising skills to better meet needs, developing a management culture and focus on improvement.
• Improving how we deploy our staff to meet the needs of patients and maximising the use of valuable staff time, reducing the need to rely on expensive agency staff when it can be avoided.
• Improving staff engagement and retention.

It outlines that work is underway on a detailed plan and update to cover all aspects of productivity improvement, including the following priorities:

• Focussing on health rather than illness by investing in preventative care, keeping people independent for longer and caring for people as close to home as possible.
• Embracing 21st century technology by investing in IT systems that work well for both staff and patients.
• Maximising value for money by taking action such as cutting duplication.