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news.UK charitable foundation King's Fund has called for the UK government to be clear about the value of the benefits it expects spending on the country's health service will provide before committing to future investment.
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According to the report authors, there is a lack of quantifiable evidence on the costs and benefits of implementing major policies such as reducing waiting times within the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). They believe that, without knowing the true costs and benefits of current policies, it is difficult to say whether patients are receiving value for money.
The report highlights evidence indicating that the rate of improvement in the benefits from health spending may be declining as more money flows into the NHS. It also points to evidence showing pressures to spend more are rising as a result of government policies fuelling demand in the health service.
The report, entitled Spending on Healthcare: How much is enough?, comes ahead of the UK government’s comprehensive review of public spending in 2007. The English NHS is now six years into a nine-year period of increased annual spending that, in the next few years, will see the UK devote nearly one pound in 10 in the whole economy to healthcare.
King’s Fund chief economist John Appleby said, “As the UK moves into the big league of healthcare spenders – but with unabated pressures to spend more – it will become increasingly important to consider in a rational and transparent way how much more we want to spend.
“To do this we will need to be clear what we want from healthcare – which may be less about improving life expectancy and more about quality of life and improved access to care. And we will need to assess whether the value placed on such benefits are worth the extra investment needed.”
Recommendations for strengthening the evidence of how the NHS uses its resources are also given in the report. These suggestions include having a program of studies on the costs and benefits of new policy initiatives, measuring the health impacts of healthcare services and interventions, and extending the role of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence’s (NICE) evaluative process to new areas of treatment and new policy areas.
The report authors conclude by saying that future NHS spending growth should be aligned to general long-term growth in the economy with flexibility for adjustment as the economy grows, but that a wider debate may be needed if demand for services and costs continue to rise.