GPSJ WINTER 2023 2024 LATEST - Flipbook - Page 20
GPSJ
NHS & HEALTHCARE
Want to improve NHS productivity?
Start by addressing its legacy IT.
The state of NHS infrastructure and legacy systems has started to attract attention from organisations
worried about falling productivity. The Highland Marketing advisory board asked what it will take to fix
the issues, against a backdrop of more funding being diverted from digital to “the frontline.”
The NHS is heading for a significant
financial squeeze, with its already
tight 2021 Budget settlement
eroded by inflation and the bill for a
year of strikes – which has come in
at around £1 billion.
With an appeal for help falling
on deaf ears at the Treasury, the
Department of Health and Social
Care and NHS England diverted
around £800 million to the frontline
20
ahead of the Autumn Statement,
including £350 million that had been
earmarked for digital initiatives.
Old and inefficient
This kind of intervention is not
unusual. Over the past decade,
the NHS has been asked to
manage with below-trend growth
in its revenue budgets, on the
assumption that it will be able to
deliver significant efficiency savings.
There has been little or no capital
funding, and frequent raids on
‘ringfenced’ funds for headlinegrabbing programmes.
The result is a £10.2 billion bill
for backlog building maintenance:
and what the National Audit Office
described as “outdated and
inefficient” IT infrastructure and
“legacy” software. Which, the British
GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC SECTOR JOURNAL WINTER 2023/2024
Medical Association, think-tanks,
and MPs have pointed out, is wildly
inefficient.
“We have never invested enough
in physical capital,” The Institute
for Government argued recently,
so “we are employing more and
more doctors and nurses and then
wasting their time while they try to
free up a bed… or spend hours
trying to book a diagnostic test…