Introduction
In 2014–15, the Department of Health (the Department) allocated £98 billion of its £111 billion budget to pay for NHS services. Finances across the NHS have become increasingly tight with health funding rising at a historically low rate of 1.8% in real terms between 2010–11 and 2014–15. At 31 March 2015 there were 90 NHS trusts and 155 NHS foundation trusts, of which 55 NHS trusts and 100 NHS foundation trusts were acute hospital trusts providing healthcare services such as accident and emergency, inpatient and outpatient and in some cases specialist or community care. NHS Improvement, a new health sector regulator, brings together Monitor, the regulator for NHS foundation trusts, and the NHS Trust Development Authority, the oversight body for NHS trusts. A significant number of acute hospital trusts are in serious and persistent financial distress and many are struggling to make efficiencies to improve their financial position. The Department and NHS England provided £1.8 billion of additional financial support to NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts in financial difficulty in 2014–15. The NHS Five Year Forward View, published in October 2014, set out changes to the provision of healthcare services that aims to enable the NHS to adapt to pressures of increasing patient demand for healthcare and funding constraints. The new models of care outlined in the Five Year Forward View aim to break down the boundaries between primary care, hospitals and community care, and integrate services around the needs of the patient.
© Parliamentary copyright 2015
Prepared 10 March 2016