NHS productivity lags as recruitment fails to keep pace with demand

The NHS in England faces an uphill struggle to improve productivity as it confronts record waiting lists, with data suggesting that an increase in staff numbers alone will not transform its performance.

Creaking infrastructure, a sicker population and a reliance on less experienced staff are hampering the health service’s attempts to treat people in greater numbers than before the pandemic, according to health experts.

This difficult context is casting a shadow over the government’s goal that hospital waiting lists should be falling by the next election.

Read full story (paywalled)

Source: Financial Times, 1 June 2023