The National Audit Office (NAO) has just published its eighth report on the financial sustainability of the NHS. The NAO has expanded on this report by publishing a companion report to set out the facts on capital investment in the NHS.
The chaos is well summarised by Chris Smyth Whitehall Editor, The Times:
Boris Johnson’s NHS promises may not be met because of financial chaos and a mounting repair backlog in the health service, the spending watchdog has suggested.
Health chiefs have taken £4.3 billion out of the buildings budgets to bail out day-to-day overspends, and hospitals are having to sell land to get by, the National Audit Office has found.
Mr Johnson wants to build 40 hospitals, but a report to be published today states that long-term buildings and infrastructure planning has been delayed by “political events” and the NHS was struggling to come up with a capital spending strategy. A maintenance backlog has risen to £6.5 billion, some of it posing urgent risks to patient care. One in seven health service buildings predates the NHS’s founding in 1948.
The NAO also found that parts of the NHS had become “serious financially unstable”.
Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: “The short-term fixes that were introduced to manage the NHS’s finances are not sustainable. The Department of Health and Social Care continues to provide some trusts with short- term loans just to meet their day-to-day costs with little hope they will be repaid. This is not a sustainable way to run public bodies.
“To bring about lasting stability, the Department and NHS England and NHS Improvement need to move away from short-term financial fixes and provide longer-term solutions.”
Sally Gainsbury, of the Nuffield Trust think tank, said: “The government will shortly enshrine in law cash increases for the NHS England budget every year until 2024. But today’s report raises serious questions about whether this new money will make a difference.”
East Devon Watch 