MEDICINE BALLS
NHS Funding
THE function of the NHS is to do the most good and least harm to the most citizens for £205bn a year (in England), which works out at around £3,500 per citizen per year. Is this enough? Hospitals always struggle to balance their books and 52 of 134 acute providers in England were given additional cash support for revenue requirements in 2024-25, according to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). This was given to trusts “in financial difficulty” but only when “necessary to support the continued delivery of services”.
Between 2025/26 and 2028/29, planned DHSC total spending will grow from £217bn in cash terms to £246bn. Adjusted for pensions and transfers, this is a real-terms increase of 2.7 percent per year, according to the Health Foundation – lower than the pre-Covid long-term average of 3.8 percent, but higher than the funding growth observed in the five years before the pandemic (1.6 percent per year). Adjusted for changing population size and age profile, however, the NHS budget is projected to grow at a rate of 1.9 percent per head per year. So NHS spending is going to be very tight indeed, and hospitals are likely to continue to need to be bailed out.