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Rise in spending on NHS has not been matched by rise in activity
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     Spending on health care in the United Kingdom rose to 8.3% of gross domestic product in 2003, reaching the level of many mid-performing European countries but still falling short of health spending in Germany, France, and Italy, new research shows.

    The extra cash being pumped into the health service has not, however, been matched by a similar rise in healthcare activity, says the report from the Office of Health Economics, a think tank backed by the pharmaceutical industry.

    Whereas spending on the NHS rose by 6.1% in 2000 and 7.3% in 2004, the most generous estimate puts the increase of the numbers of patients treated in hospitals at just 4%.

    The implication is that the government has not achieved value for money, says the report. But the truth is that nobody knows because value for money, or NHS productivity, is not being measured. Current measures of activity are too crude to establish whether the increased spending means that more patients are benefiting from health care or that health care is simply costing more.

    The report says that the UK government has been rapidly increasing its spending on health, with spending rising by 36% between 1999 and 2003.

    But despite an 18% increase in spending on new staff during the same period, the United Kingdom still has proportionately fewer doctors than other European countries. The United Kingdom currently has 2.3 doctors per 1000 population, compared with 3.3, 3.4, and 4.4 doctors in France, Germany, and Italy respectively in 2002. The government has met all the 2004 headcount targets for doctors and nurses, however, and will reach its 2008 goals, the report states.(Ahmed Kassem)