Health Services: Costs

(asked on 6th December 2016) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate his Department has made of the transaction costs of the (a) internal and (b) external market to health services in each of the last three years.


Answered by
Philip Dunne Portrait
Philip Dunne
This question was answered on 12th December 2016

National Health Service commissioners’ primary responsibility is the planning and purchase of NHS services to meet the health needs of the population from all types of healthcare providers. The vast majority of these services are purchased from NHS providers (NHS trusts and foundation trusts), however an element of these types of services is purchased from non-NHS healthcare providers such as local authorities, voluntary sector organisations and private sector providers.

NHS England does not collect or report the spending on transaction costs relating to the management of this responsibility. However, these types of costs will score to NHS England’s overall administration budget, the spending outturns for which are published in NHS England’s Annual Report and Accounts and summarised in the table below.

Since NHS England began operations in 2013, administration costs have been reducing year on year.

2013-14

2014-15

2015-16

£ million

£ million

£ million

Administration Costs

1,898

1,780

1,649

Reticulating Splines