NHS waste hits £7.6BILLION-a-year with overpriced loo rolls, crutches and wheelchairs never returned
Health chiefs are currently trying to find £22bn worth of savings to ease pressure on the creaking NHS
THE NHS wastes up to £7.6BILLION every year, a shocking new study has claimed.
Among the biggest wastes of public cash include billions of pounds overpaid on cleaning, energy bills and even pills patients do not need, the
The study, carried out by Good Health, found many hospital trusts were paying vastly inflated sums for items ranging for expensive equipment to everyday items like loo roll.
The City Hospitals Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust was found to be coughing up 66p for every loo roll it used, while Pennine Care Foundation was paying 34p each.
One NHS trust paid just £650 for replacement hips – while another coughed £5,000 for its versions, the Mail reported.
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The study found contractors often exploited the health service’s mega £116bn budget at a time when it is trying to deliver £22bn worth of savings.
Great chunks of that could be found in cutting back on inflated prices the NHS is targeted with, the study found.
Up to £100million is reported to have been wasted on conceding legal cases brought against the health service.
While basic running costs in hospitals such as cleaning and maintenance is costing management £1bn more than it should.
Patients not returning wheelchairs and crutches reportedly costs £18m every year.
The very basics of running the service such as loo roll is costing the NHS £2bn over the odds every year, while post-op knee and hip infections cost £300m, the report found.
In a separate report on NHS inefficiencies carried out by Lord Carter of Coles last year, he found that most healthcare trusts “don’t know what they buy, how much they buy, and what they pay for goods and services”.
Orthopaedic surgeon and national director of quality and efficiency Dr Timothy Briggs went one step further.
He told the Mail: “I don’t think the NHS does need more money.
“It has to prove it can use every pound the taxpayer gives it to the best possible outcome at best value, which it is not doing at the moment.”
A spokesperson for the NHS dismissed the £7.6bn waste figure as “inaccurate”.
In a statement to the Mail it added the number did not take into account “recent measures we have taken to make savings in some of these areas, for instance . . . introducing a new bill on generic medicine pricing to prevent exploitation by companies.”
It added: “Any unwarranted waste, particularly at a time when the NHS is under financial pressure, reduces the amount of money available for frontline patient care.”
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