Define, Inform, Dictate and Deliver

Abstract

In October 2014, Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, committed the service to plugging £22 billion of the expected £30 billion gap in its finances by 2020 through productivity gains of 2–3% a year by 2020. Since that announcement, the Government promised to provide £8 billion by 2020. This may notionally have been received, but it has not alleviated the severity of these financial constraints (Barnes and Dunhill, 2015).With austerity measures biting even deeper into the budgets of NHS organisations, all staff are under pressure to make cost efficiencies and at the same time improve operational standards and patient outcomes. In this pressured change environment, there are hospitals and departments that have embraced the demand for change, creating innovative skills mix platforms from which to deliver services. But there are also those who have remained entrenched in operational protocols. In both scenarios, the overarching driver for service re-design has been operational efficiency guided by government targets.