This week the King's Fund shared their written submission for the period covering this Spending Review, focussing on the short, medium and long-term outlook for health and social care funding.
The submission outlines key messages for the Spending Review. These include:
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The NHS is on course to overspend: emergency deficit funding is likely to be required, possibly amounting to £1 billion
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Commitment to increase the NHS budget in real terms by £8 billion is welcome but this is an absolute minimum requirement and it won’t pay for new commitments such as the 7 day services. Money must be front loaded from 16/17 to avoid accelerating decline in performance and quality
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A dedicated transformation fund is essential to unlock productivity improvements and new care models
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The previous government protected health spending: this must be maintained. Further cuts will be a false economy
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Achieving the £22 billion savings in efficiency by 2020 is ambitious. However, there are significant opportunities to improve productivity. To do so, the NHS must engage staff at all levels in a new mission to deliver better value at lower cost
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The social care system must be protected from further cuts in local government budgets and the £6 billion in funding previously earmarked to implement the Dilnot reforms must be invested over the Spending Review period
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Temptation to support social care by transferring funds from the NHS must be avoided. There is a compelling case for a new settlement which brings to two systems together and moves to a single ring-fenced budget and a single local commissioner of services
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The long term aim should be to increase public spending on health and social care to 11-12% of GDP, the proportion currently spent by countries such as Canada and the Netherlands on health care alone
You can read more on the website where you can download the written submission.