NHS could ‘pop’ without urgent cash boost, health bosses told

The NHS could ‘pop’ unless it receives an emergency cash injection in this month’s budget, the boss of the service’s financial regulator has warned.

Jim Mackey, the chief executive of NHS Improvement, told the annual conference of NHS Providers in Birmingham that without extra funding when the chancellor delivers his budget on 22 November, the health service would have to start providing less care and limit its role in ways that would be harmful to patient care.

The Guardian reported that Mackey delivered a stark assessment of how the NHS was faring after its seven-year budget squeeze at the conference.

Its already poor performance against key targets for A&E care, cancer treatment and planned operations could deteriorate even further if ministers did not provide more cash.

Mackey told his audience that the service’s finances and ability to do everything expected of it were still on a knife-edge, even though over half of the 233 health trusts were likely to balance their books this year.

Although the government recognised that the NHS’s budget was tight, signifiant extra money was unlikely to arrive when Philip Hammond delivered hi budget, he suggested.

Theresa May has promised to increase the budget of the NHS in England by £8 billion between now and the end of this parliament in 2022, but critics say this is far less than the service needs given that demand for care is rising at four per cent a year and staff are quitting, partly in frustration at being their income fall as a result of seven years of pay freezes or one per cent pay rises.

Ministers wanted the NHS to become much more productive before they gave it further funding, and worried that putting in additional money would not lead to huge improvements in performance, Mackey said.

The exact scope of what care the NHS could be expected to provide would need to be ‘reset’ and some forms of care ‘deprioritised’ unless its budget went up beyond the small increases ministers had already planned, Mackey said.

Jim Mackey, chief executive of NHS Improvement, said: “More than half are managing the money, a much smaller proportion are managing in a sustainable way. It is far too tight, it is far too finely balanced. At what point does this pop?

“The worse thing is that it just pops in performance and the money deteriorates and we get back to where we were when we no longer have an investable proposition.

“We have created an investable proposition where Treasury and government are listening and they understand the problems we have got. But turning that, in the context we have got now, into real money is very difficult.

“I hope it [extra money] comes in this budget but at some point it needs to come. If it’s not this budget, it needs to be a budget in the future, hopefully before things pop.”