A policy briefing is available for LKS staff to share in their organisations.  Produced by the JET Library at Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.  Feel free to reproduce it (with acknowledgement).

What does this mean for libraries? With services under great pressure, there is a greater need for library and knowledge services to support effective and efficient healthcare. As well as making health care provision safer, K4H impact case studies demonstrate that LKS can help make cost savings, and can support health service transformation.

Source: King’s Fund

Link to main document

Date of publication: July 2018

Summary of driver:

This is the 26^th quarterly report by the King’s Fund, and as well as looking back at what has happened over the past three months, considers the recently announced funding offer for the NHS.

• Services remain under substantial pressure – there are 4.2m waiting for consultant-led care
• There is little optimism that current A&E performance targets can be met
• Some NHS organisations are spiralling further into deficit while others are seeing their surpluses bolstered by centrally-released funding
• There are some positive signs of increased joint working between local providers and commissioners of care
• The recent announcement of a five-year funding offer for the NHS provides an opportunity to make good on previous attempts to deliver out-of-hospital services, including social care
• By March 2018 2,755 people had been waiting more than a year for treatment – the highest number since 2012/13
• The time by which 92% of patients are seen after a referral is now 22 weeks; the highest since March 2009
• GP referrals are growing at a slower rate than before but are still increasing
• Hospital-bed occupancy is at its highest level for eight years
• Emergency admissions in May 2018 were 5.6% higher than the year before
• 44% of CCG finance leads are considering extending waiting lists or reducing activity for certain elective specialties
• In March 2018 only 9 of 137 Trusts with major A&E departments me the 95% standard
• The overall 95% standard has not been achieved since July 2015
• By the end of the 2017/18 financial year the provider sector had a deficit of £960m
• The commissioning sector had an underspend of £955m due to underspending in central NHS England budgets
• Nearly two-fifths of CCGs are expecting to overspend their budgets next year
• 80% of CCGs are considering extending the number of low-value treatments and prescriptions that will no longer be funded
• 42% of Trust finance directors are expecting to end 2018/19 in deficit
• 51% of finance directors and 21% of CCG finance leads feel patient care has worsened in their area over the past year
• However, closer working through STPs and ICSs is starting to pay some dividends
• Acute Trusts account for 87% of Trusts in deficit
• The long-term NHS funding settlement, a Green Paper on social-care reform and a 10-year health and care workforce strategy – taken together – might provide the best opportunity in a decade for health and social-care services to both find some stability and use that stability as a base for more fundamental transformation and improvement.

Tagged: Funding