Productivity, particularly within the NHS, is often shrouded in misconceptions, myths and hearsay. Compounded with the narrative often put out in the national press about the NHS being underfunded and staff feeling overworked and undervalued, the word “productivity” in some circles, is greeted with hisses and boos, and kept as far from the conversation as possible.

What is productivity? What do we actually mean by it, and why should we be talking about something which I believe, is the elephant in the room?

Productivity, in its purest form is a measurement of what you’re paying for versus what you’re getting back. For example, it’s the number of patients being seen per day (what you’re getting), per WTE (what you’re paying for).

As we know, not a day passes by that someone doesn’t mention the huge deficits many trusts are in, the crippling bank and agency costs and the extortionate amounts of money spent on waiting list initiatives.  The cost of care for many organisations is far too high. It actually makes absolute sense to be asking, what are we actually getting in return for the money we’re actually spending?

The Lord Carter review into productivity pointed out that £5 billion could be saved in non-specialist acute trusts alone through improvements and efficiency. That’s a lot of money, and certainly enough to warrant a conversation into what we’re actually paying for and what we get in return.

Is it really acceptable that in some community organisations, only a third of time is spent in DCC? We have to be talking about it and doing something about it. In these particularly hard times where the rule book has been almost thrown out in order find capacity to deal with Covid-19, what better time to start than now?

If you have crippling costs or questions around the quality of care that is being delivered, you may very well have a productivity problem; but, the starting point should always be, is what we’re getting in terms of productivity acceptable?