Health Services: Productivity
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department plans to introduce mandatory reporting on productivity improvements linked to capital investment.
Answered by Karin Smyth
The Department is committed to ensuring that capital investment in the National Health Service delivers measurable improvements in productivity and patient outcomes. While there is currently no mandatory reporting framework specifically linking capital investment to productivity gains, NHS organisations are expected to demonstrate value for money and the impact through business case processes and post-project evaluations. The Department is exploring options to strengthen the monitoring and evaluation of capital investments, including how productivity gains can be more systematically captured and reported in future.
More broadly, the NHS plans to begin regularly publishing assessments of productivity performance against the 2% year-on-year improvement target we set in our 10-Year Health Plan. Data published in September 2025 showed an estimated 2.7% year-on-year improvement in acute productivity in the NHS over the 2024/25 financial year, with further information available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/patients-treated-more-quickly-as-nhs-productivity-rises-over-year
Early data for the first quarter of 2025/26 suggests this trend is continuing with a further 2.4% improvement in acute productivity, with further information available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/nhs-recovery-continues-with-above-target-productivity-growth
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