§ Mr. MarlowTo ask the Secretary of State for Health how he measures productivity in the national health service; and whether he intends to introduce other forms of measurement.
§ Mr. DorrellThere is no single measure: the Department looks at a number of indicators, including unit costs, throughput and hospital length of stay. However, a broad measure of the overall increase in efficiency of the hospital and community health services (HCHS) can be obtained by comparing increases in activity levels with increases in expenditure. The overall increase in activity is obtained by weighting together the increases in various areas of the service by their costs. This shows improvements in efficiency of 15 per cent. since 1978, or 1.4 per cent. per year on average.