Up to £16.8bn is needed to enable the NHS to clear the backlog of people waiting for routine hospital care, according to new analysis from the Health Foundation’s REAL Centre.
In total, the NHS will require a funding increase of between £4.0bn and £7.1bn in 2022/23 alone, with additional investment needed in subsequent years to meet growing demands for care.
However, these figures do not include the direct costs of COVID-19 nor the indirect costs associated with reduced productivity resulting from measures including social distancing, enhanced infection prevention and control measures.
The Health Foundation said this is because the ongoing impact of the pandemic on the NHS is still ‘too uncertain to model conclusively’.
The analysis did show that for every 1% reduction in productivity, an additional £1.5bn per year in extra funding will be required to meet ‘same care’ demands.
With regards to staffing, the increased demands for services and the need to address the backlog suggest that the NHS workforce needs to grow by over a third over the coming decade, in addition to the recruitment already needed to reduced current shortages.
The REAL Centre found that this means a total NHS workforce growth of up to 277,500 full-time equivalent staff would be needed by 2024/25.
The analysis also estimates that the capital budget will need to increase from £6.4bn in 2018/19 to £10.3bn in 2024/25 to allow for investment in equipment and bed capacity.
In response to the new analysis from the REAL Centre, Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: “It’s critical that the government now makes good on its promise to give the NHS ‘whatever it needs’. This will mean the health service can continue doing the vital work of both managing the ongoing threat from COVID-19 and tackling the huge backlog of care that has built up.”
“We now urgently await clarity on both the size of the NHS budget for the second half of this year and the shape of investment from next year onwards to ensure health leaders are not forced to cut services,” he added.
