NHS: £21.2m Spent Learning to Cut Costs

The cash-strapped NHS has spent an estimated £21.2m on cost-cutting advice from private consultants in just over a year. The UK has been divided into 44 “Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships” areas that are meant to reduce NHS spending but have so far spent millions on learning how to do so.

Spending Millions to Save Billions

National GP magazine Pulse made Freedom of Information requests to all of the STPs to see how much of the NHS’s precious budget they had spent on administrative and austerity measures.

Just 19 of the 44 STPs responded, revealing that they had spent a combined £9.18m from March 2016 to May 2017. That figure was multiplied to provide an estimate for the remaining 25 STPs, resulting in a projected total of £21.2m across the UK.

Pulse discovered that some STPs had found the money for external management consultants by cutting and redirecting funds from frontline services.

Leading GPs called the decision to take that money from patient care “difficult to justify”, especially when the firms aren’t just hired to overhaul NHS financial plans. Some are being used for strategic analytics, modelling, workforce planning and “public engagement communications”.

Of the STPs that did reply, Kent & Medway has spent the most, paying out £3.2m to four different firms. Kent GP Dr John Allingham said the sum was “eye-watering” for a highly deprived region but Kent & Medway insisted that it was “extremely cost-conscious” and had invested money only when and where it was “absolutely necessary”. Unfortunately it’s been invested in admin and management advice rather than direct care. Allingham likened it to finding cash for cake when “so many people have no bread”.

North Central London STP (highlighted left) didn’t respond to the FOI request but the British Medical Association revealed in January that it had paid £2.3m to two firms, Deloitte and McKinsey.

Doctors have come out against the excessive spending, calling it “a sad state of affairs”, “not fair” and “very unfortunate”.

Dr Peter Holden, the treasurer of the Derbyshire Local Medical Committee, pointed out that the £580,000 his local STP had spent on outside consultants amounted to £1,000 for every GP in the region.

STPs Not Up To The Job

The Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships are part of the Conservative Government’s “Five Year Forward” plans to cut £22bn from the NHS by 2020.

Despite the extraordinary demands placed on it, the NHS managed to save a “near-impossible” £3.1bn in the last year but the STPs have come under repeated fire since being rolled out. BMA writer Peter Blackburn described them as “not just failed ambitions but potentially dangerous ones” and Pulse’s findings will only confirm such fears. STP managers maintain that spending £21.2m now will save much more money in the long term.

Responding to questions about its £1.25m expenditure, Sussex and East Surrey STP said that “sufficient expertise and capacity was not available from within the partnership” to meet the necessary requirements.

If STP managers lack the vital skillset for the job then why on earth were they hired? Rather than replace or recruit new managers with strategic and planning expertise, STPs are throwing money out of the NHS and into private firms – but it’s the patients who are paying the real price.

by Jo Davey

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