Hospitals: Per Capita Costs
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the potential financial impact of aligning funding to the average per-patient spend of the top quarter most efficient hospitals on rural hospitals.
Answered by Karin Smyth
The basis of the funding allocated to providers is set out in the National Payment Scheme, with further information available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/pay-syst/nhs-payment-scheme/
This includes setting out the prices paid where funding varies with activity, and these prices are the same for all providers. They are based on average costs across National Health Service providers rather than top quarter performance. We have not directly assessed the impact of changing the payment scheme to set prices based on the top quarter of the most efficient providers. However, NHS England sends packs to all NHS providers quantifying productivity and efficiency opportunities based on metrics in the Model Health System dataset. This allows individual providers, including those in rural areas, to benchmark themselves against others, and measure the financial impact of improving performance.
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