Tonight’s #Panorama looks at the care #NHS patients received when treated in private hospitals. Without commenting on specific cases, I set out 3 reasons we would be concerned by a substantial increase in the proportion of NHS patients treated in private hospitals. A thread >> 1: While many patients would be happy to be treated in a private unit if it meant they got seen quicker, there are many whose medical complications mean they need to be treated in hospitals that have high dependency units. These are not typically found in private hospitals >

The NHS is in financial trouble, again. But are politicians simply being too impatient about the speed our health service is able to recover from the shock of the pandemic? A thread >> It seems unlikely the chancellor will pull any more blue-tinged NHS notes out of his hat tomorrow, which means the NHS this year is currently on track for a £1.7bn budget overspend >>

There’s a fine tradition in government to use royal events to sneak out bad news, and the bank holiday was no exception for the Dept of Health and Social Care which used it to confirm it did not have the money to afford the recent pay settlement for NHS staff (thread >>) Earlier this month the gov agreed that NHS staff on the Agenda for Change pay framework (that is, most staff) would receive a non-consolidated bonus as part of their pay for the year that ended March 31 2023, at a total cost of around £2.7bn (averaging around 6% of basic pay) >>

A quick (ok not so quick) thread on Health Secretary Sajid Javid’s #R4Today comment about “record investment” in the NHS. [Insert here boring recurrently required note that there is “record investment” EVERY year, because: inflation] (1/too many) Last week’s headline “extra investment” in health and social care for England was £30bn over 3 years above original spending plans (2/?)

#NHSpay a thread: It doesn’t matter what you think about the 3% offer for NHS staff, it simply isn’t affordable within the existing NHS budget, which is a problem as the gov doesn’t seem prepared to make any extra funds available to increase it [1/13 - sorry] A 3% increase to staff pay would cost around £1.9bn if applied to all staff employed by NHS trusts (hospitals, community and mental health services). This would be higher if it was also applied to staff at GP practices and other contracted-out services [2/13]

BBC reports extra £1bn for NHS capital spending this yr. There’s a catch: The £1bn is cash hospitals and other NHS trusts already have but have been forbidden to spend. They earned it last yr in incentive payments for cutting their costs [thread, 1/8ish] The “PSF” incentive deal was this: cut your costs and report a surplus in your accounts, and the government will give you a big fat cash reward in return that you can spend on new kit and building repairs [2/8]

Not much solid info this morning on what the NHS “birthday present” boils down to, but here’s a run down of the immediate cost pressures the NHS faces next year. Any funding increase that doesn’t at least cover these wont touch the sides (tiresomely endless thread follows>>) £2.6bn= the cash increase to Dept of Health’s total budget already planned for 19/20. This represented a paltry 0.4% real terms increase over 18/19. Just bringing it up to the (insubstantial) average real terms increase since 2015/16 of 1.3% would cost a further £1.2bn