Economic pressures: affordability vs. choice and community care development
Continuing economic constraint could lead to a mismatch between extending patient choice and community care, and ensuring affordable services.
With the current tough economic and financial climate (with growth on spending only projected to be 0.1% p.a. up to 2014-15 and with prospects of further low spending thereafter), there is a risk of a future mismatch between rhetoric of increasing patient choice and what is affordable in practice.
On one hand, emphasis on patient choice promises to allow greater flexibility of services, with the possibility of patients receiving services at home and in community clinics.
Is this realistic in practice? Increasing the range of choice requires significant financial resources; if tightened budgets persists, there will almost certainly be limits imposed on what number and types of treatments can be commissioned, and the numbers and skills levels employed to manage and deliver care. This conundrum is especially relevant to nursing.
Decision makers therefore need to consider what services can be provided, given the finances available to them.
Sources or references
- Suggested by a number of stakeholders in interview and in workshops during CfWI research on nursing.
- From unpublished CfWI report (available on request)
- Audit Commission, 2012, Delivering sustainable cost improvement programmes
- Nuffield Trust, 2012, NHS and Social care funding: the outlook to 2021/22
Some of the information in this section is provided by stakeholders and expert groups, and does not necessarily represent the views of the CfWI.
