Productivity in the NHS

Building on Hospital finances and productivity: in critical condition? we have updated our analysis of hospital productivity using the most recent NHS reference cost data (2014/15).

We define productivity increases as a ratio of hospital output to hospital input and examined the change in the  productivity of 152 trusts from 2009/10 to 2014/15. Acute care activity included in this analysis refers to the following hospital activities: elective inpatients, non-elective inpatients , A&E and day case. More details on the methodology can be found in the technical appendix published with the Critical Condition report.

The chart shows that between 2009/10 and 2014/15, hospital productivity increased by 0.3%, at an average rate of 0.1% per year. Productivity fell (-0.96%) in 2014/15 for a third consecutive year since 2009/10 as a result of cost rising faster (5.7%) than activity (4.7%).