The Better Care Fund is an innovative idea but the quality of early preparation and planning did not match the scale of the ambition. Current plans forecast £314m of savings for the NHS rather than the £1 billion in early planning assumptions.
The Better Care Fund has not achieved the expected value for money, in terms of savings, outcomes for patients or hospital activity.
It is important that the services for vulnerable people at the Yarls Wood Immigration Removal Centre are delivered ‘right first time’ and this did not happen here. Steps are now being taken to address the problems but 35% of the recommendations from Her Majesty’s Inspector of Prisons’ 2015 inspection have not yet been implemented.
The National Audit Office will carry out an independent assessment of the modelling behind NHS England’s (NHSE) Long Term Workforce Plan
Most women have good outcomes from NHS maternity services, but there are significant and unexplained variations in performance around the country.
Despite funding and staffing levels for mental health services increasing, and more patients being treated, millions of people with mental health needs are still not accessing services, with some facing lengthy waits for treatment, according to a new National Audit Office report.
Many NHS trusts need to tackle a range of financial, quality and governance issues if they are to meet the standards required of them to become self-governing foundation trusts by 2014. The Department of Health and the NHS will now have to decide how they will deal with those facing the most severe problems.
Hospital productivity has fallen over the last ten years. There have been significant increases in funding and hospitals have used this to deliver against national priorities, but they need to provide more leadership, management and clinical engagement to optimise the use of additional resources and deliver value for money.
In December 2015 a five year contract, worth around £800 million between UnitingCare Partnership and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough clinical commissioning group collapsed after only 8 months because it ran into financial difficulties. NAO examined the design, procurement and operation of the contract and the events that led to its termination.
The report finds variations in health outcomes across the four nations, and will help health departments examine how better value for money could be achieved.
The financial performance of acute hospital trusts has deteriorated sharply and their financial performance looks set to worsen in 2015-16.
A factual briefing on alcohol treatment services in England, informed by discussions with the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England, and the Association of Directors of Public Health.
High profile incidents remind individuals and organisations just how important it is to manage potential conflicts of interest. In March 2017, the Court of the Bank of England commissioned a review of the institution’s approach to managing conflicts of interest. The review was prompted by the resignation of Charlotte Hogg who had been Deputy Governor […]
This is our second report on backlogs for elective and cancer care. It examines the design of NHSE’s recovery plan, how the NHS has been implementing the plan and the ongoing risks NHSE has to manage.
The Department of Health & Social Care’s role in overseeing the adult social care workforce.
The New Hospital Programme (NHP) has experienced delays and is expected to deliver 32 of the intended target of 40 new hospitals by 2030.
NHS hospitals often pay more than they need to when buying basic supplies. A combination of inadequate information and fragmented purchasing means that NHS hospitals’ procurement of consumables is poor value for money.
The NAO’s report highlights that England’s special educational needs system is not delivering better outcomes for children and young people.
Value for money is not being achieved across all trusts in the planning, procurement and use of high value equipment. There are significant variations across England in levels of activity and a lack of comparable information about performance and cost of machine use.
In March 2021, the C&AG submitted evidence to the Health and Social Care Committee inquiry into the Department of Health & Social Care’s White Paper, ‘Integration and Innovation: working together to improve health and social care’. This drew on the National Audit Office’s past body of work to highlight the main risks and opportunities the White Paper presents, both in terms of effective implementation of the proposed reforms and in terms of making progress towards overarching health and social care policy aims.