Critically consider how the NHS may address its productivity and sustainability challenges

Critically Consider how the NHS may Address its Productivity and Sustainability Challenges. Student’s Name Institution Course # and Name Professor’s Name Submission Date The National Health Service (NHS) has faced tremendous challenges in the recent past that warrant scholarly attention. NHS should consider maximizing productivity and sustainability as part of the continued efforts to survive the challenges it faces amid the Covid-19 aftermath and satisfy long-term growth in healthcare demand. According to Charlesworth (2023), NHS productivity can be theorized as what the health service generates in relation to the resources utilized. Since the population health outcome is an asset, NHS productivity is vital for the country’s future prosperity and sustainability. Sustainability in the NHS context implies “wider social goals” (Foster & Badger, 2021). This paper critically discusses NHS's productivity and sustainability challenges and offers solutions. Productivity Challenges and Solutions The subsequent sections critically evaluate the productivity challenges facing NHS and possible solutions. NHS Productivity Challenges There are increasing efficacy requirements on providers based on the latest planning guidance. With reduced productivity growth, the gap that would need to be filled with additional financing is expected to become more significant. Healthcare productivity had been improving before COVID-19, though it plummeted in 2018/19 for the first in the previous decade (Horton et al., 2021). Accordingly, NHS productivity continued to drop amid the pandemic because of infection mitigation measures, the postponement of particular services, as well as the lack of adequate personnel in the healthcare sector (Khan, 2023; Dunn et al., 2023). Forecasts indicate that every additional 1 percent drop in productivity would be met by an additional £1.5bn of financing every year to sustain access and quality of healthcare services (Horton et al., 2021). Amid this backdrop, productivity challenges should not override the fact that the fundamental NHS challenges are attributed to underfunding, which is a political decision. Therefore, the primary focus of NHS should be establishing avenues to achieve sufficient financing as required (Al-Janabi et al., 2023). The implication of the underfinancing is that at present, NHS must be financed by £3,058 for each individual in the country if its supply of services would match the 2009/10 service level (Murphy, 2023). Since the person’s actual spending in the UK is approximately £2,642, it implies a shortfall of over £400 per individual every year in NHS financing within the UK at present (Murphy, 2023). The individual spending trend as per 2021/22 price levels is shown in the figure below. Figure 1: NHS spending per person of UK population 2000-2021 (Murphy, 2023). Solutions One of the primary solutions to the productivity problem is leveraging valuable opportunities to augment safety, efficiency, and quality within existing community, acute, mental, and primary healthcare frameworks. This entails measures to mitigate running costs and wastes, foster procurement, reduce hospital stays, seek social services’ collaborations, redesign clinical roles and avoid redundant clinical procedures. All these cost-saving plans are expected to contribute to the overall productivity of the NHS. Taking 2009/10 as a baseline, these plans would yield significant productivity gains in the future, albeit not addressing the political issue of underfinancing. However, the logic of saving costs and reducing wastes to foot extra costs incurred by NHS assumes that the total government expenditure is limited to GDP proportion or a fixed sum that may not be surpassed. This may not be the case. The share of national income going to UK government expenditure varies over time. Although managing running costs and mitigating waste with the suggested NHS cost savings efforts may contribute to additional spending and productivity boost, the government may increase spending as a share of the national GDP via political advo...