NHS financial pressures are having a widespread but often unseen impact on patient care

14 March 2017NHS financial pressures are increasingly affecting patient care, often in ways that go unseen, according to a new report by The King’s Fund.Understanding NHS financial pressuresfinds that access to and quality of care are both being affected in different ways across the NHS. While public attention tends to focus on high-profile examples of rationing such as restricting access to some types of treatment, the report authors warn that financial and other pressures are also affecting patient care in ways that often go'under the radar'.The authors looked in detail at four services– testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, district nursing, elective hip replacement and neonatal care– to explore the impact of financial pressures on patient care.They found that the slowdown in funding - which started in 2010/11– has taken time to have an impact but is now affecting patient care. The findings suggest that community and public health services have been hit hardest, while acute and specialist services have so far been relatively protected. This creates a fundamental challenge to the vision set out in theNHS five year forward view, which focuses on strengthening community-based services and prevention.The report finds that financial pressures are affecting services in the following ways:STI testing and treatment (GUM): In some parts of the country, local authority spending on these services was cut by more than 20 per cent be...
Source: The King's Fund - Press - Category: UK Health Source Type: news