News / Concern for savings in Wales’ ‘critical’ year

NHS Wales will have a transitional year in 2010/11 as its emphasis shifts to higher quality care but finance managers are worried that the need to make significant efficiency savings will undermine efforts to improve performance, quality and safety.

Minister for health and social services Edwina Hart published the annual operating framework (AOF) for NHS Wales for 2010/11 in December.

The framework sets out a number of objectives, including improving quality and financial stability by reducing harm, waste and variation, delivering services through good governance, empowering staff and grasping the opportunity of integrated care.

Ms Hart acknowledged the financial situation but insisted 2010/11 was a critical year on the road to improvement.

‘The year ahead is a transitional year for several reasons – the NHS reform process needs to embed, the financial challenges facing us all are real and must not be under-estimated, and we need to begin to see the impact of the recent review of NHS Wales,’ she said.

The AOF said NHS organisations must work within their available resources; achieving efficiency savings through continued reductions in the cost of service delivery to reach financial balance.

‘Those leading the NHS organisations must focus their attention on achieving the efficiency and productivity measures, eliminating waste, and delivering higher quality services,’ it added.

However, some finance managers were concerned the AOF had ignored the ‘elephant in the room’ – depending on the uplift to local health boards’ allocations the cash-releasing efficiency requirement in 2010/11 could be between 5% and 7%. This was on top of 5% efficiency savings in the current financial year.

The Welsh Assembly government said the AOF would ‘build the momentum’ towards the five-year service, workforce and financial strategic framework, which are due to be published soon. One finance manager was hopeful this would strengthen the chances of securing financial balance by ‘setting the tone’ for the next five years.

The AOF said the five-year document would ‘require a more ambitious and collective approach that identifies planned surpluses, delivered by improved quality and the sharing of innovation and learning across Wales’.

It also identified 14 high-value opportunities, including service line management and patient level costing, improving procurement and supply chain efficiency and prioritising the highest-value prevention campaigns.