Productivity will become urgent priority as NHS funding slows
Productivity, in terms of benefit to patient health from each pound spent, will become an urgent priority as the growth in NHS funding slows, the King's
Fund warned in a report this week.
Variations across the UK in referrals, prescribing rates and spending
decisions also need to be reduced, the King’s Fund adds. “Failure
to tackle unnecessary variations effectively has had an adverse impact
on equity as well as efficiency.” Incentive systems should be designed
to ensure that variations in clinical practice and outcomes do not go
beyond those related to differences in patient need, the report urges.
The King’s Fund also argues that, although cost-effective prescribing
can help make the NHS more productive for the same cost, such benefits
are hard-won. “It is clearly possible to improve productivity locally,
but even with what look like a very good set of drivers to improve productivity,
it is hard graft, and gains are often unspectacular,” it says.
There is, nonetheless, scope for increasing the benefit gained for the
same costs by improving the way in which medicines are bought by the
NHS, the King’s Fund argues, echoing the Office of Fair Trading’s
call last week for reform
of the Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme (PJ, 24 February, p208).
The OFT recommended the current system be changed so that medicines’ prices
better reflect the benefit they bring to patients.
Commenting on the OFT’s proposals for the PPRS, the Pharmaceutical
Services Negotiating Committee said: “In principle, the PSNC has
broadly welcomed the OFT’s recommendations on branded generics
and off-patent brands, but we continue to promote generic substitution
as a better alternative which would support the NHS community pharmacy
contract and ensure a healthy generics market in the UK.”
The PSNC also said that it would be discussing with the Department of
Health the impact of any changes to the PPRS on the prices paid to contractors
and the availability of the £500m purchase profit protected in
the pharmacy contract arrangements.
Health care
spending UK spending on
health care increased to 9.4 per cent of its gross domestic product
in 2006, Office of Health Economics
data released
this week reveal. This brings closer to fulfilment the promise Prime Minister
Tony Blair made in 2000 to bring UK health spending into line with the European
average. In 2004, the average spending of the countries (other than the UK)
that made up the EU in 2000 was 9.6 per cent of GDP. |
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