Theresa May will have to rip up the government’s financial plans for the NHS and commit more than the promised £8bn extra by 2020, a hospitals boss has said.
Chris Hopson, the chief executive of NHS Providers, said ministers must come up with a new plan to fix the health service’s crumbling finances or risk it becoming unable to function properly.
In a submission to the Treasury before next week’s autumn statement, NHS Providers, which represents 96% of NHS trusts in England, says a rethink is necessary because the calculations underlying the government’s £8bn pledge are flawed.
It says demand for care is rising faster than envisaged in the blueprint drawn up by NHS bosses in 2014, the Five-Year Forward View, and social care has deteriorated.
Hopson said: “Some of the key assumptions in the Five-Year Forward View, on which the current financial and NHS delivery plans for this parliament are based, have turned out to be wrong. There is now a clear and widening gap between what is being asked of the NHS and the funding available to deliver it.
“The NHS simply cannot do all that it is currently doing and is being asked to do in future on these funding levels.”
Full story in The Guardian 17 November 2016