Current NHS trends ‘deteriorating quality at extra cost’

Non-party thinktank Reform has claimed that current trends in the NHS are resulting in patients receiving a deteriorating quality of care at an extra cost of 20 billion pounds every year.

The group believes that a genuine reform of the health services would achieve significant improvements within 18 months of implementation.

In a recently-published report it states that reform is the only way to unlock the value contained in the NHS budget, advocating the establishment of an economic constitution that defines the duty to create value at all levels.

The report outlines two possible scenarios, the negative, which results in poor quality and access at a cost of 110-120 billion pounds and the positive, where reform boosts access to quality services at a cost of 90-100 billion pounds.

Nick Bosanquet, professor of health policy at Imperial College London, said: “The Department of Health’s strategic challenge is to transform the quality of NHS care within a foreseeable future of tightly limited resources.”

He added that the NHS will not benefit from the implementation of a charter that is little more than a statement of good intentions on behalf of the health service.

Last month, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg called for the NHS to be transformed into a People’s Health Service with bottom-up reform.