Around £16bn could be saved if health and social care services were designed to more effectively meet people’s needs, a report claims.
Standardisation of services and the belief in ‘economies of scale’ are causing costly administrative burdens for the public sector, while failing to provide vulnerable people with the support they require - according to Locality.
Produced in partnership with professor John Seddon of Vanguard Consulting, ‘Saving money by doing the right thing’ suggests public services should be ‘local by default’, designed to meet the specific needs of the public and give focus to underlying purpose instead of outcome.
‘We know how to reduce billions of pounds worth of unnecessary demand on public services; simply abandon scale in favour of designing localised services which are able to do the right thing for people in the first place,’ CEO of Locality, Steve Wyler, said.
‘It is not public service which is at fault here. It is a system dominated by scale and standardisation. That is what needs to change’
Findings from the report suggest real demand for public services is not rising and instead it is an ‘artificial demand’ created by organisations that is on the increase.
Seddon said: ‘Studies of hundreds of thousands of patient records, case notes and files reveal that the main cause of rising demand is the same people fighting the system to get what they need. Public services assess the same people up to a hundred times, refer them on multiple times, keep them in hospital when they shouldn’t be there and give them equipment they can’t use.’
‘All this unnecessary activity isn’t free, it costs billions of pounds,’ he added. ‘We should design services which are able to do the right thing for people in the first place.’
