With the election out the way the Government is again focusing on the NHS deficit and ways to get hospitals to balance their budgets. The good news from the recent Carter review into NHS efficiency is that there are potentially an annual £5bn savings which could be made of which £3bn has already been identified by trusts. The bad news is that so far they have not been implemented and making these savings within the next five years will be extremely difficult, though not impossible. The Government agreed in the Autumn Statement to give the NHS in England £10bn more in real terms by 2020/21 with the health budget increasing from £101bn in 2015/16 to £120bn by 2020/21. Of this budget, non-acute and specialist acute trusts spent £19.3bn last year or 26% of the total while non-specialist acute trusts spent £55.6bn or 74%. But the NHS must still deliver 2-3% annual efficiencies, equal to 10-15% in the next five years.
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