NEWS
£600m back office savings could be redirected to NHS frontline
£600 million could be available for NHS frontline health services through streamlining the way health organisations run their back offices, an independent review has found
Health and published by the Foundation Trust Network, has estimated that the NHS could release £600m a year for front line services by improving the back office functions of health organisations.
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The review of back office efficiency, QIPP National Workstream: Back Office Efficiency and Management Optimisation, headed by Tony Spotswood, chief executive of Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals, looked at ways of streamlining services such as finance, human resources and information management and technology (IM&T).
he review,
commissioned by the Department of
The report concluded that in most cases, maximum efficiency would come through sharing services.
The report found savings could be made across all sectors of the health service including providers such as foundation trusts, other NHS trusts, and primary care trusts. There is a clear message for all NHS organisations to simplify, standardise and share.
National Director for
Improvement and Efficiency, Jim Easton said: “This report, written by the NHS for the NHS, is just one example of how the service is taking the lead in identifying where they can make best use of resources for the benefit of patients, as well as the taxpayer.
“There is genuine scope to redirect funds to front line services through the standardisation, simplification and sharing of back office services.”
The report concludes that
Unnecessary visits to A&E cost region’s hospitals £79.25 million a year
F
igures released by NHS Central Lancashire show the cost that
unnecessary visits to the region’s hospitals are taking. One out of every four people who go to accident and emergency don’t need to be there, at a cost of £79.25 million a year – and the cost is rising.
NHS staff throughout the region are giving their backing to the Choose Well campaign, which aims to tackle the rise in A&E attendances.
Dr Bob Bennett, GP urgent care lead at NHS Central Lancashire, said: “The figures are alarming. To put it in more practical terms, £79.25 million is the equivalent of 752 GPs. It seems that people
6 nhe
are forgetting the purpose of A&E departments.
“The number of people using A&E and 999 services is going up year on year in the north west. New services have been introduced, such as walk-in centres, minor injuries units and urgent care centres in many areas, and have helped to ease some of the pressure; but the numbers of people using emergency services continues to rise.
“I think we need to get back to the message that A&E departments are for life- threatening and emergency conditions, such as heart attacks, strokes, breathing problems and serious accidents.”
“Our hospital A&E teams deal with some of the highest numbers of people who have life- threatening conditions such as heart-attacks, strokes and lung disease in the country.
“We need to make sure we can concentrate on helping these emergency cases.
“A&E teams are faced with having to deal with cases such as coughs and colds, backache and upset stomachs on a daily basis – conditions that could be dealt with through a trip to the high street chemist.
“Through Choose Well we want to re-educate people about using the right service to get the right treatment. We’ve introduced a
Nov/Dec 10
‘traffic light’ system to highlight the appropriate services to use. We really need to get local people on our side with this issue.”
Anne Bowen, general manager in accident and emergency at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said:
“To ensure the smooth running of our A&E department during what is a very busy period I would encourage people to make use of the services available and only visit if it is necessary.”
“With financial challenges facing the NHS, we need to employ both simple and innovative initiatives to ensure that we make every penny of our protected health budget count.”
Tony Spotswood said: “All trusts need to redefine what activities they do and how they do them. Health bodies should establish regular benchmarking to monitor their performance in comparison with similar organisations.
back office services should be examined so that waste and activities which add little value are eliminated.
This could involve standardising processes and sharing services to bring savings for GPs’ surgeries and non-clinical hospital functions such as reception and patient record keeping.
The report provides guidance to individual organisations on evaluating the relative efficiency of their back office functions and outlines the steps necessary to re-engineer and transform back office services to realise the savings potential.
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