The rise and decline of the NHS in England 2000–20: how political failure led to the crisis in the NHS and social care
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Author(s):
- Ham, Christopher, author
- Contributor(s):
- King's Fund (London, England), issuing body.
- Publication:
- London : The King's Fund, April 2023
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- Health Care Reform -- economics Health Care Reform -- trends Politics Social Work -- economics Social Work -- trends State Medicine -- economics State Medicine -- trends England Great Britain. National Health Service
- Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- Multi-year funding increases above the long-term average and a series of reforms resulted in major improvements in NHS performance between 2000 and 2010. Performance has declined since 2010 as a result of much lower funding increases, limited funds for capital investment, and neglect of workforce planning. Although NHS performance held up well on most indicators in the early years of the 2010s, deficits in NHS trusts became widespread by 2014 and the NHS failed to hit key waiting time targets in 2014 and the following years. Performance continued to decline for the rest of the decade, with the NHS and social care both showing signs of growing stress across all services, including mental health, learning disability services, primary care and community services. Constraints on social care spending resulted in fewer people receiving publicly funded social care and a repeated cycle of governments promising to reform social care but failing to do so. Long-term improvements in population health either stalled or went into reverse after 2010, and successive governments were reluctant to use their regulatory and fiscal powers to tackle the wider determinants of health. Cuts in the public health grant to local authorities hindered work to improve population health. Increases in NHS activity and funding since 2000 have been much greater in hospitals than other services and this has hindered ambitions to deliver more care in people’s homes or closer to home. The coalition government (2010–15) and successive Conservative governments since then have failed to heed the warning signs of deteriorating performance and preferred to use short-term fixes rather than seek long-term solutions.
- Copyright:
- Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY license. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (i, 46 pages, 1 unnumbered page))
- Illustrations:
- Illustrations
- NLM Unique ID:
- 9918734085206676 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918734085206676