Verum writes: Applying the same solutions to the NHS will give diminishing returns

The NHS is facing many challenges, perhaps the greatest being to provide excellent care, while being able to do so at an affordable cost. Within the NHS there is already an overspend in NHS Trusts, the organisations that predominantly run hospitals, which ended the 2015-16 financial year £461m worse off than forecast and with a £2.45bn total deficit. This is three times bigger than the £822m overspend incurred the year before, and more than 20 times the size of the £115m deficit in 2013-14.

The exponential growth means that within the next five years the NHS deficit will be in the order of £30bn. This assumes that there are no savings and funding rises in line with inflation, with savings of 2-3% reducing the gap to £8bn. However, balanced against any savings, over the forthcoming years the degree of complexity of treatments will increase and the number of people requiring treatment through the NHS will increase. Birmingham has stated if they carry on running services as they are now they would need an additional 430 hospital beds by 2020 just to meet demand. That equates to the size of a general hospital, and there simply isn’t the money to build that hospital and provide the staff to run it.