The most advanced sustainability and transformation plans (STPs) will received an additional £325 million, chancellor Philip Hammond said during his Spring Budget speech.
Both social care and health received some financial attention in Hammond’s Spring Budget on Wednesday, amid concerns about a growing crisis in the NHS.
However, the plans are already being criticised for being too little to late, with the biggest single line item £2 billion for social care over the next three years.
Amid growing concerns that the Sustainability and Transformation Plans – viewed as key to knocking the NHS organisationally and financially into shape by 2020 – are veering off course, Hammond reasserted the Government’s commitment to the scheme.
“We recognise, too, that in addition to the funding already committed, some of those plans will require further capital investment,” he said.
“So the Treasury will work closely with the Department of Health over the course of the summer as the STPs are progressed and prioritised.”
Hammond said a small number of STPs will be ready before the Autumn budget, to which the Government will commit a further “£325 million of capital to allow the first selected plans to proceed”.
In Autumn, a further “multi-year capital programme to support implementation of approved high quality STPs” would be announced, he said.
The budget itself allocates an additional £390 million over three years to STPs.
How much of this will trickle down into transformation part of plans, and specifically digital transformation, is unclear.
NHS digital funds have a history of being raided to fund other projects, with concerns growing that the latest such scheme, the digital exemplar programme, could face a similar fate.
Earlier this year, the Department of Health admitted in a Commons’ Public Accounts Committee hearing that it has been raiding the Sustainability and Transformation Funding to plug revenue gaps for struggling trusts.
Other announcements regarding the NHS include:
- An additional £2 billion for social care over three years, which will “help to free up beds by easing discharge of elderly patients”, Hammond said.
- £120m capital available this year for up to 100 new “triage projects” at English hospitals in preparation for next winter.
11 March 2017 @ 12:08
Thieving bastards. Running down and giving our NHS and our money away to your mates’ consultancies and corporations. You will be held to account.
9 March 2017 @ 19:50
CluedUp is right: massive unlegislated or planned further reorganisation (by ad.hoc bodies with no legal existence or accountability) is unlikely to produce the apparently desired resulte of !financial cuts – and cuts in services 2.”vertical integration” – which seems to mean that secondary care will be in total control.(Trusts have to be in financial surplus: could this create COI?) 3. As CCGs are established in statute (and STPs are not) who will be legally accountable? 4. any funds go to “successful” projects: what is expected to happen in STP areas less convincing in their plans? Or will some areas of the country just be left to suffer – or in limbo? Post Code Lottery?
Join the real world: :-
NHSE has proven track record of allocating the samre money over and over again – and then finding there isn’t any money – if there ever was.
Gvt might appear to suffer from the Bellman Syndrome:”& what I say three times is true”
There is a problem: without detailed plans/proposals/bids there is little hope of accessing proclaimed funding.
This government (no comments on previous – not relevant to current problems) has record of requiring a lot of planning/investment to bid (competetively) for limited funding – and then withdrawing said funding.
Is it worth it *or* VFM?
9 March 2017 @ 14:23
Go read the Public Accounts Committee report – it’ll give you nightmares!
It’s there in black and white – the STPs are to go ahead without ANY double-running (because there isn’t the money for double-running). It’s CRIMINALLY irresponsible to make massive changes to any big system without a period of time when there’s a back-up system just in case everything goes badly wrong …
The STPs intend to close hospitals FIRST, then hand over responsibility for patient care from the closed hospitals to the even more desperately over-stretched, unwilling community health teams, local authorities and masses of largely unregulated, unchecked, independently run care agencies and care / nursing homes. These STPs are likely to kill hundreds of patients who would otherwise have lived.
STPs aren’t likely to survive the bad press and parliamentary scrutiny resulting from many patients deteriorating badly within hours because of unsafe discharge from hospital. That said, the dumping of the STPs months after they’ve begun won’t be much comfort to those who’ve already suffered, their relatives or their clinicians.
9 March 2017 @ 10:19
So …
If you a pushing forward with STP plans regardless, you can have some funding to help make this happen , but not necessarily improve things short term 🙂