Better integration and collaboration will help to tackle the cost of long-term sickness related economic inactivity, a new NHS Confederation report has said.
The report, called Improving our nation’s health: a whole government approach to tackling the causes of long-term sickness and economic activity, said there are around 900,000 more economically inactive people since 2020 across the UK, 85% of which are long-term sick.
It said that by reintroducing between half and three-quarters of these people into the workforce, GDP would be boosted by around £109-177bn (2-3% in 2029).
The report said the solution to this problem was ‘beyond just clinical care’ and must involve a ‘whole government approach’ with better integration across services.
It said: ‘We define a whole government approach (WGA) as a coordinated approach across different levels of government, departments and delivery partners in pursuit of a common set of cross-cutting goals and objectives.
‘WGA signals that, for certain complex problems such as tackling the rise of long-term sick, economically inactive, there might be a need to shift from single-purpose organisations that deliver in silos to an integrated system where the interrelated political, social, health and economic factors of policies are addressed in coordination.’
It added that the approach was designed to ‘maximise resources’ and ensure money is deployed in the ‘most impactful and efficient way across the entire public sector’.
It recommended a series of actions to help instil this approach to health, including:
- Integrated employment and health support.
- Setting outcome targets to return 0.5 million people to work who have become economically inactive since Covid, and to return to 0% growth in this figure.
- Better employment conditions.
- Benefit provisions and in-work grants to support people to return to work.
The report also suggested there be a common purpose across government, better collaboration and place-based decision-making and more joined-up funding and resources to facilitate the approach.
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: ‘The UK faces a series of enormous health challenges as seen in the sharp rise in the number of people out of the workforce due to long-term sickness.
‘This spike has defied European trends and requires both additional investment in the NHS alongside coordinated and sustained action across government departments focused on building the nation’s health.
‘There is broad consensus that the NHS requires major transformation to respond to the changing needs of its patients, to be financially sustainable and to achieve better outcomes. However, this cannot be realised that without more money and without tackling what is contributing to such high levels of demand today.’
He added that ‘no single part of government can solve this alone’ and called for the development of a health improvement strategy.
‘Getting this right will lead to a more productive NHS, support more people to be in work and provide a major boost to the economy. Failure risks rising waiting lists and the proportion of public spending spent on the NHS crowding out other forms of investment, which will then only weigh down the economy,’ he said.
NHS Confederation also recently called on the government to plug the £2.2bn NHS deficit, or risk facing service and staffing cuts ahead of a ‘difficult winter’.
Over the weekend, health secretary Wes Streeting committed to three ‘strategic shifts’ for the NHS, including moving from hospital to community.
