The claim
“We believe we can improve millions of lives, and by better management of long term conditions, with less need for acute admissions, more people managing their own conditions, in their own homes, fewer emergencies, we can save more than £2 billion over the next three years.”
Prime Minister Gordon Brown, speech to the King’s Fund, 8 February 2010
Cathy Newman checks it out
Labour wants to offer voters some NHS goodies in the run up to the election. The promise of one-to-one cancer care at home is just the latest, and won’t be the last. But how to pay for it when the record rises in health spending are coming to an end and the NHS boss has ordered £20bn of savings? Labour thinks it’s found a way of squaring the circle – saving something like £2.7bn by moving care out of hospitals and closer to home. But do their sums add up? The FactCheck team will do the math…
Over to the team for the analysis
Gordon Brown calls it a revolution in healthcare. A “personalised” NHS service with one-to-one care for cancer patients. Apparently, it will save lives and billions of pounds.
The idea is to allow patients to have chemotherapy and dialysis without going to a hospital. Fewer admissions means fewer costs for hospitals, and ultimately, saving the NHS money.
Care in the community
The experts we spoke to agreed on one thing. Care in the community saves money.
“It’s always cheaper and better to keep people out of hospitals” says Richard Humphries, a senior fellow at the health policy think tank the King’s Fund. “A lot of people end up in hospital because it is the only option.”
But will this save the NHS money?
“Whether it saves £2bn I have no idea,” admits Mr Humphries. “I don’t know where that figure comes from. Gordon Brown’s aspirations are good but the devil is in the detail”.
One week cancer tests
Gordon Brown also promised people will only have to wait one week to get cancer test results back.
“That is new,” concedes Mr Humphries. “That will probably be more expensive in the short term, needing more resources and people. But in the long term, the NHS could save billions by treating people early.”
“Care in community has been going on since the 1960s so this isn’t a new policy,” says Professor Allyson Pollock, an expert in public health policy at the University of Edinburgh.
But she struggles to understand how the prime minister has estimated these savings. “It’s all much more complicated than he is presenting,” says Professor Pollock.
‘None of this makes sense’
“None of this makes sense,” she says and doubts the savings projected by the scheme can be achieved. “A lot of NHS care has already been transferred to local authorities. It is very difficult to see how any more savings can be made.”
“I don’t think this will save any money,” she concludes bluntly.
The government has not given funding details for today’s announcement. We have to wait for a forthcoming white paper for that.
Cathy Newman’s verdict
Gordon Brown’s £2 billion-ish figure appears to have been plucked out of thin air. It seems very far-fetched – but it’s impossible to know for certain until Labour can come up with much more explicit details about where the savings come from. This they have failed to do today. The onus is now on the party to prove it’s not guilty of creative accounting.
Update: See what happened when we followed this up with Health Secretary Andy Burnham.
