‘Our plan for patients’ focuses on the challenges facing the NHS this winter and next: and our expectation is that the focus will largely be about delivery and access to care, given the pressures on the system and the effect of winter. There is also significant reform taking place in the health and care system to improve integration of services around the needs of patients. Alongside this, we are investing in and diversifying the training pipeline to increase the supply of doctors. The government has committed to publishing a comprehensive workforce plan in 2023 and this will include independently verified forecasts for the number of doctors, nurses and other professionals that will be needed in 5, 10 and 15 years’ time, taking full account of improvements in retention and productivity. Chapter 3 of our evidence outlines the department’s current strategy to ensure that the NHS has the workforce it needs. The NHS settlement has been carefully prioritised to ensure that the NHS can meet these key priorities and keep growing a diverse, skilled NHS workforce within a challenging fiscal context. ![]() £9.6 billion over the SR period for COVID-19 related health spendingĬhapter 2 of our evidence focuses on how the changing context has impacted the department’s settlement and how NHS finances are being targeted at meeting key priorities.additional funding to grow the NHS workforce - there are currently 72,000 nurses in training and over 9,000 people training to be midwives, as well as a record number of medical students in training.around £8 billion to tackle the elective backlog - a significant part of this funding will be invested in staff - both in terms of capacity and skills.As was covered in last year’s evidence, SR21 specifically included: The Chancellor’s Autumn Statement 2022 reiterated the government’s priorities on delivering the long-term plan ( LTP), improving health outcomes for patients by ensuring the NHS can tackle the elective backlog, and having the resources to continue its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to these changes, and last year’s pay award being significantly above the government’s affordability envelope, NHS England ( NHSE) is undergoing significant reprioritisation. While the government has continued to prioritise investment into the NHS, these factors have increased the costs of delivering services, and the financial pressures systems are facing. At the time of SR21 inflation was forecast to peak at over 4% but, due to higher energy prices and the invasion of Ukraine, looks to have peaked at just over 11% this winter (His Majesty’s Treasury ( HMT) have provided further evidence on the economic outlook). Inflation has been much higher than previously forecast. This will continue to have consequences for the productivity of services and bed occupancy rates. The prolonged impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been significantly higher than assumed in SR21, with more COVID-19 patients occupying beds in 2022 than in 2021 or 2020. Since the evidence we provided last year, the context in which the NHS operates has been rapidly changing. ![]() In addition to the long-term NHS settlement announced in 2018 and the additional funding announced at the last Spending Review ( SR21), funding confirmed at the 2022 Autumn Statement means the NHS resource budget will increase to £160.4 billion in 2023 to 2024, and to £165.9 billion in 2024 to 2025, up from £123.7 billion in 2019 to 2020. In the challenging economic and fiscal context in which pay recommendations will be made this year, decisions on pay awards will have a particular impact on the spending review settlement and the commitments made within it. ![]() This year, the government is again inviting the DDRB to make a pay recommendation for doctors and dentists not in multiyear deals. This follows the 2022 to 2023 pay round, in which the government looked to the DDRB for a recommendation on pay for staff not in multiyear deals, and after careful consideration, and reprioritisation of existing departmental funding, accepted the recommendations in full. This chapter sets out the wider context for the department’s evidence for the 2023 to 2024 pay round and provides an overview of this year’s written evidence to the Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration ( DDRB).
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