The King’s Fund has published its Quarterly Monitoring Report on NHS performance. It notes that, in its fourth year of effectively no real increase in funding and undiminished urgency to generate more care to meet growing demands, the NHS is under huge pressure and its finance directors are growing increasingly pessimistic about the financial position of health organisations and local health economies.
The report also highlights an increase in the nursing workforce to nearly 315,000 over the past six months – the highest on record – meaning hospitals now face a difficult choice about whether to balance the books or maintain quality of services.
