Like health and social care systems across the world, the NHS is facing one of the greatest challenges in its history – to meet rising demand for care with apparently less resource. The mantra 'more for less' has grown in volume as policy makers and key opinion leaders design ways to address the challenge.
Whilst the public purse may no longer be capable of responding to the funding shortfall, there could still be significant opportunities to generate finance from other sources to meet demand and fill the resource gap. The opportunity of attracting social investment funding to underpin NHS community focused service developments is real, possible, and here now.
The Nuffield Trust held a half day event where NHS practitioners and managers, together with policy makers and socially motivated funders had the opportunity to discuss innovative sources of funding as an alternative strategy for NHS sustainability.
Themes from the event included:
- The ideology for social investment and why the NHS should be leading the way
- The nature of social investment in other sectors and why social investors would wish to invest in the NHS
- Practical steps that the NHS can take to identify source of funding, create good business cases for investment and deliver social benefit
We reviewed case studies from local government, criminal justice systems and emerging health projects which develop the case for socially motivated investment and the deployment of social impact bonds.