Health and social care delivery plan

How Will Delivery Of Our Plan Be Funded?

45. Achieving long-term financial sustainability of our health and care system and making the best use of our total resources is critical to this delivery plan. We will need to deliver transformational change while managing increasing demand for services, inflationary pressures and the growing needs of an ageing population. This will require a short-, medium- and long-term focus on sustainability and value of services alongside reform.

46. Over the next five years, we will invest £70 billion of resources in our health and social care system. At the same time the impact of our demographics and inflation in pay and in prices means that we must increase our overall productivity. Health funding is expected to grow in resource terms by the end of this Parliament, with significant planned investment in areas such as primary care, mental health, social care, cancer and new elective capacity. Spending on primary care services is set to increase by £500 million so that it accounts for 11 percent of the frontline NHS Scotland budget by May 2021.

47. A financial plan will support this delivery plan, creating the environment and incentives for change, and supporting transition. This will ensure stability to maintain the quality of care, health of the population and best value from resources through:

• providing dedicated funding to invest in the levers of change;
• putting in place arrangements to support sustainable financial balance across the whole of NHS Scotland;
• creating short-term financial capacity to allow time to deliver change through efficiencies in current ways of working;
• supporting clinicians to make best use of resources through investment in costing and value tools to support shared decision making on clinical and financial evidence;
• driving an early intervention and prevention approach across services; and
• developing an approach to infrastructure and digital that supports the shift from hospital to community and primary care and works across the public sector estate.

48. The components within the delivery plan will be financially and economically assessed at key stages in their development, from initial scoping through to implementation, to create a comprehensive assessment of affordability and sustainability.