The NHS needs to be more productive – or is it more efficient?

The NHS needs to be more productive – or is it more efficient? Stop reading this and get back to work – you need to be more productive. Or is it more efficient?

In the long-term plan, NHS England sets out a goal of achieving at least 1.1 per cent increases in productivity over each of the next five years. But there’s often confusion about the term ‘productivity’ and what it really means, with efficiency and productivity often used interchangeably despite meaning very different things. In the simplest terms, an increase in productivity is when a business makes more of a product (in the case of the NHS, it would be more “care”- doing more operations, for example) using the resources they have available. Efficiency, however, relates to the quality of the work being done – so producing the same, but at a lower cost to the NHS or with less waste. The King's Fund