Overall public satisfaction with the NHS in England is currently at a 40-year low of 29%, a recent survey by the King’s Fund thinktank has found. People are not happy with waiting times for GP and hospital appointments. Over half of those surveyed think the service is beset by staff shortages. A similar percentage think the government does not spend enough money on the NHS.
This is despite the fact that in 2022-2023 the NHS received £152.6 billion in total budget – an increase (at 2022-2023 prices) of £28.4 billion compared to 2016-2017. The service has 32.4% more full-time staff too. Its workforce hit an all-time high of 1.275 million employees in February 2023 (up from from 963,000 in June 2013).
And yet, the figures around productivity show that people’s dissatisfaction is not without cause. Over the two years between 2019 and 2020 and 2020 and 2021, productivity across the NHS decreased by 23%. This extraordinary drop followed 14 years of productivity gains.
