The UK government has demanded that NHS England find ways to reduce core NHS spending – to around £330m compared to the sum agreed in the 2021 spending review, and after other adjustments such as increased employer pensions costs, according to the Health Service Journal.
This comes as a consequence of needing to find funding to deal with the government’s ‘Living with Covid’ plans and the cost of the public health policy around Test and Trace, says Julian Kelly, NHSE chief financial officer.
Kelly went on to say that achieving this cut would likely involve “slowing down” some transformation programmes and ambitions from the NHS long-term plan, including “how fast we go on the technology change, on some of the innovation stuff we have spoken about…and the prevention programme.”
Dan Teare, healthcare Sector Director for mpro5, believes there is a simple solution the NHS should be implementing to save money without reducing quality of care.
“Digital transformation is a vital undertaking for any organisation in the modern world, and it will get easier and cheaper as the journey goes on, as well as improve efficiency and reduce overall costs. However, it often takes some initial investment to get that process started.
Yet, that is not always the case. NHS Trusts use a wide variety of software, which ends up costing millions to adopt and deploy. By consolidating their digital needs into a single, adaptive and effective piece of software, standardised throughout the relevant parts of the health service, rather than spending more money on multiple expensive and inefficient digital tools all doing different things, the NHS can both save money and digitally transform.”
Whilst digitalisation is a key objective for the NHS, and new digital technologies are helping Trusts to work smarter than ever, the implementation of such software can be strained, especially when trying to find software for individual needs and also cut down on expenses.
As Teare says, “few would disagree with a vision of digitalisation driven by cutting costs, improving service levels, and streamlining the day-to-day processes of NHS workers. Yet too many NHS Trusts and NHS organisations misunderstand the fundamentals of digitalisation and, as a result, continue to get software and software procurement wrong.”
“It is important that NHS Trusts find smarter ways to save on tech without cutting corners in terms of quality of care. Utilising a singular yet configurable platform instead of procuring a multitude of single-instance software platforms is a more efficient way to cut down on procurement costs.”
In October 2021, the Government promised the NHS £2.1 billion in IT upgrades and digital health technology so hospitals and other care organisations are as connected and efficient as possible. Investing to this extent highlights the importance the NHS places on digital transformation initiatives, but also the drawbacks when it comes to actively implementing efficient strategies in this regard.
”It must be accessible and useable by all staff who need it – with as little specialist training as possible. Clinicians or operations teams cannot be expected to be data scientists or IT professionals – as they have a very important job to do, with little time to search through data points or look for who stored what where.”
“Additionally, more configurable platforms provide future-proofing in that they can evolve as needs change. There is no point cutting costs now if NHS Trusts will only need to replace all their technology a couple of years down the line – they would only be paying for a layer of duct tape rather than fixing the fault itself.”
“Ultimately, shifting the perspective to a singular yet simple platform service means better patient care, better customer service, and overall an easier life for workers across the NHS – for doctors, nurses and facility management teams. Relying on the software to fill any gaps enables workers to spend more time helping people and saving lives.”