Productivity of the English National Health Service: 2020/21 update

Productivity of the English National Health Service: 2020/21 update NHS productivity compares growth in health care outputs and inputs: the more outputs produced with a given amount of inputs, the higher the productivity growth. This assumes that more health care – such as operations in hospitals – generates more health for society. However this report finds that this assumption did not necessarily apply during the pandemic because hospitals were told to cancel as much non-emergency care as possible to free up acute beds and reduce the risk of Covid-19 infection. It also describes how, at the same time, the overall cost of the health care inputs – such as staff, beds, and medicines – remained or even increased because the pandemic required the employment of extra staff where possible and also extra spending on new safety measures. Centre for Health Economics