“The £20bn cash injection for the NHS in England is ring-fenced for front-line health services, which is mainly the wage bill and the cost of medicines. The government explicitly excluded longer-term investment spending which covers things like the maintenance of buildings, IT, the purchase of X-ray equipment, CT and MRI scanners, the budget for training new doctors and nurses, and funding for public health interventions like smoking cessation. Funding gaps in these budgets are less immediately obvious to patients but they are make-or-break in the drive to improve productivity and ensure the longer-term sustainability of the NHS. Prevention and staff training budgets have been cut with the result that we have 40,000 fewer nurses than we need.”
Full article in Public Finance, 28 June 2019