Chancellor to announce £300m capital funding for NHS technology

NHS technology is set to receive £300 million of new capital investment to help to improve productivity and reduce waiting lists in the Autumn Budget.

Rachel Reeves, chancellor, will announce the funding to upgrade technology and roll out new digital tools to NHS staff, according to a government press release ahead of tomorrow’s budget.

It will include technology to automate administrative tasks, provide faster access to patient information and enable better staff communication and coordinated care so that staff can spend less time on admin.

Reeves said: “At the Budget I’ll set out how we’ll deliver on the country’s priorities to cut NHS waiting times, cut debt and cut the cost of living.

“We’re driving down waiting lists by bringing healthcare to patients’ doorsteps and turbocharging NHS productivity with cutting-edge technology.

“Our record investment, combined with ruthless efficiency and reform, will deliver the better care and better outcomes our NHS patients deserve.”

The government will also pledge to open more than 100 Neighbourhood Health Centres by 2030, with construction “delivered by a dynamic new approach between the public and private sector, involving both repurposing current estate and new buildings”.

These ‘one stop shops’ with GPs, nurses, dentists and pharmacists under one roof, will be part of the Neighbourhood Health Service intended to provide end-to-end care, improve access to GPs and avoid patients being passed around the system.

Karin Smyth, health minister, said: “Neighbourhood Health Centres fundamentally reimagine how the NHS works – bringing care closer to home and making sure the NHS is organised around patients’ needs, not the other way round.

“The chancellor is rightly boosting investment in the NHS after we inherited a health service on its knees – with Lord Darzi’s investigation uncovering a £40 billion black hole. But funding will only get us so far.

“We need to use every measure available to us, which is why we’re leveraging in private investment to construct some of these centres, making the most of all expertise and every tool at our disposal.

“Our new NHS Rebuild approach will give the health service the investment it needs, repurposing and building a new generation of Neighbourhood Health Centres across the country.

“It will go hand in hand with reform and efficiency – ensuring proper value for money for taxpayers.”

Neighbourhood health services will initially focus on improving access to general practice and supporting people with complex needs and long-term conditions – like diabetes and heart failure – in the areas of the highest deprivation, eventually expanding to support other patients and priority cohorts.

Ruth Rankine, director of primary care at the NHS Confederation, said: “Innovative use of existing estate across the whole of the NHS as well as local authorities, with the potential for new private sector investment, will support the delivery of neighbourhood services and ensure patients can access them more easily closer to home.”

The government said that it will learn from previous public-private partnerships and only supplement public investment with private investment where it provides value for money to the taxpayer.