Researchers used further evidence to confirm previous findings that healthcare spending in England had an important impact on health across a range of conditions.
Source: Stephen Martin, Nigel Rice and Peter Smith, Further Evidence on the Link Between Health Care Spending and Health Outcomes in England, Research Paper 32, Centre for Health Economics/University of York (01904 433648)
Links: Paper
Date: 2007-Dec
An audit report said that the National Health Service as a whole achieved a net surplus of £515 million in 2006-07, compared with a net deficit of £547 million in 2005-06.
Source: NHS (England) Summarised Accounts 2006-07: Achieving financial balance in the NHS, HC 129 (Session 2007-08), National Audit Office, TSO (0870 600 5522)
Links: Report | Accounts | NAO press release
Date: 2007-Dec
The government published its 2007 Pre-Budget Report and Comprehensive Spending Review. It said that spending on the National Health Service would rise by 4 per cent per year in real terms over the period of the review, from £90 billion in 2007-08 to £110 billion in 2010-11.
Source: Meeting the Aspirations of the British People: 2007 Pre-Budget Report and Comprehensive Spending Review, Cm 7227, HM Treasury, TSO (0870 600 5522)
Links: Report | Summary | PSA Agreements | Hansard | HMT press releases | DH press release | Kings Fund press release | NHS Confederation press release | NHS Alliance press release | BMA press release | IHM press release | Patients Association press release | Help the Aged press release | ECCA press release | Liberal Democrats press release | BBC report | Guardian report
Date: 2007-Oct
An audit report said that National Health Service finances had improved markedly overall, moving from deficit to surplus in 2006-07: but nearly a third of NHS bodies were still in poor financial health.
Source: Review of the NHS: Financial Year 2006/07, Audit Commission (0800 502030)
Links: Report | Audit Commission press release | Liberal Democrats press release | BBC report | Telegraph report | FT report | Guardian report
Date: 2007-Oct
A think tank published a comprehensive assessment of the 50 per cent real-terms increase in National Health Service spending since 2002. It examined how the extra money had been spent; what the National Health Service had achieved; and whether the pace and direction of government reform had delivered value for money. Increases in funding had delivered notable improvements: more staff and equipment; improved infrastructure; significantly reduced waiting times and better access to care; and improved care in coronary heart disease, cancer, stroke, and mental health. However, the additional funding had not produced the improvements in productivity assumed in the original 2002 Wanless review.
Source: Derek Wanless, John Appleby, Anthony Harrison and Darshan Patel, Our Future Health Secured? A review of NHS funding and performance, King's Fund (020 7307 2591)
Links: Report | Summary | King's Fund press release | BMA press release | NHS Confederation press release | NHS Alliance press release | NHF press release | FT report | BBC report | Guardian report | Telegraph report
Date: 2007-Sep
A report said that the cost of private finance schemes to the National Health Service was set to spiral. The high fixed costs of hospitals built under the private finance initiative would impel the concentration of services on their sites at the expense of other NHS hospitals.
Source: Mark Hellowell and Allyson Pollock, Private Finance, Public Deficits: A report on the cost of PFI and its impact on health services in England, Centre for International Public Health Policy/University of Edinburgh (0131 651 3957)
Links: Report | CIPHP press release | BBC report | FT report | Guardian report
Date: 2007-Sep
A government report described the capital spending programme within the National Health Service, highlighting the ways in which it was being used to advance its policy objectives, in particular by: improving the patient environment and experience, in terms of more single rooms and better designed hospitals; modernizing services (trusts had to reassess how they shaped and configured their services and patient pathways), taking on board the provision of new information technology, new equipment, and new clinical areas; and improving access and offering better choice, by delivering a new generation of facilities giving patients more control over when, where, and how they were treated.
Source: Rebuilding the NHS: A new generation of healthcare facilities, Department of Health (08701 555455)
Links: Report
Date: 2007-Jun
The National Health Service in England (excluding foundation trusts) made a surplus of £510 million in 2006-07, compared to a deficit of £547 million in the previous year. In the same period foundation trusts reported an aggregate surplus of £130 million
Source: NHS Financial Performance Quarter 4, 2006-07, Department of Health (08701 555455) | NHS Foundation Trusts: Financial Report for Year Ended 31 March 2007, Monitor (020 7340 2400)
Links: Report | DH press release | Foundation Trusts report | Monitor press release | BMA press release | UNISON press release | UUK press release | NHS Confed press release (1) | NHS Confed press release (2) | Conservative Party press release | Guardian report (1) | Guardian report (2) | BBC report
Date: 2007-Jun
A government report highlighted the benefits expected from an £8 billion increase in National Health Service spending in England in 2007-08. There would be 390,000 extra operations, 400,000 more outpatient appointments, and a new outreach service to help vulnerable people with long-term medical conditions such as diabetes and asthma. By the end of March 2008, 85 per cent of patients needing hospital treatment would have been admitted within 18 weeks of referral; and 90 per cent of those patients who could be treated without admission to hospital would get the care they needed within the same deadline.
Source: Local Spending for Local Needs: how the NHS intends to use the money, Department of Health (08701 555455)
Links: Report | Appendices | DH press release | Guardian report | FT report
Date: 2007-May
A report by a committee of MPs said that financial deficits in the National Health Service had arisen partly as a result of poor management and planning. The standard of financial management expertise varied across the NHS, as did the level of clinical engagement in financial matters. The NHS had also been under significant financial pressure to meet the costs of national pay initiatives which the Department of Health had not fully costed.
Source: Financial Management in the NHS, Seventeenth Report (Session 2006-07), HC 361, House of Commons Public Accounts Select Committee, TSO (0870 600 5522)
Links: Report | BMA press release | NHS Confed press release | Guardian report | BBC report
Date: 2007-Mar
The government announced that it was scrapping accounting rules (criticized as unfair by the Audit Commission) under which overspending National Health Service trusts not only had to pay back their debts but received less income the following year as well.
Source: House of Commons Hansard, Written Ministerial Statement 28 March 2007, columns 96-98WS, TSO (0870 600 5522)
Links: Hansard | DH press release | Audit Commission press release | BMA press release | NHS Confed press release | BBC report | FT report
Date: 2007-Mar
A report (by the Department of Health's chief economist) examined the factors that might have caused the emergence of National Health Service deficits in 2004-05, and contributed to their apparently uneven geographical distribution. The view that additional resources allocated to the NHS had been absorbed by generous national wage contracts, leaving little for capacity growth, was not consistent with the evidence.
Source: Barry McCormick, Explaining NHS Deficits, 2003/04 - 2005/06, Department of Health (08701 555455)
Date: 2007-Feb
The government responded to a report by a committee of MPs on National Health Service deficits. It said that the deficits could be tackled without jeopardizing service performance targets.
Source: The Government's Response to the Health Select Committee's Report on NHS Deficits, Cm 7028, Department of Health, TSO (0870 600 5522)
Links: Response | MPs report
Date: 2007-Feb
A think-tank report said that if the National Health Service were to cope with lower growth in funding from 2008 onwards, the government needed to take urgent action to reduce widespread variations in hospital performance, improve productivity, and win the support of health staff in its efforts to reform the service.
Source: John Appleby (ed.), Funding Health Care: 2008 and beyond - report from the Leeds Castle summit, King's Fund (020 7307 2591)
Links: Report | King's Fund press release | BBC report
Date: 2007-Feb
