Why does the NHS always need extra capacity?
Is the NHS always short of capacity because it's always short of money? Perhaps not. Waiting list initiatives and a reliance on 'extra' suggest that something else is going on.
Extra sessions, extra beds, bank, locum, and overtime rates. Why do we keep needing this? The same capacity would be much cheaper if we could only plan ahead for it, and make better use of what we’ve got.
Is the NHS always short of capacity because it's always short of money? Perhaps not. Waiting list initiatives and a reliance on 'extra' suggest that something else is going on.
In theory, the NHS has highly sophisticated processes for finance and activity planning. In practice they are rather less polished. So here are two changes that would transform planning for the better.
Is this once-off, or something we need to keep doing? It's an expensive confusion to make, but it happens up and down the NHS. Here's how Gooroo Planner makes it all absolutely clear.
Most performance reports tell you what happened, but not whether it was enough. That's a pretty big omission, and the only way to fix it is to have a plan and track your progress against it. What does that look like? And how do you actually do it?