UK Health Service Likely to Miss $34Bln Savings Target by 2020

The United Kingdom’s National Health Service is unlikely to achieve five-year savings of £22 billion.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) is highly unlikely to achieve five-year savings of 22 billion British pounds ($34 billion) it had pledged, local media reported, citing senior NHS officials.

In October 2014, NHS chief executive Simon Stevens committed $34 billion in incremental productivity gains by 2020 to plug the anticipated $47-billion financing gap in the publicly funded service.

"Our current working assumption is that we can make about 15 billion pounds of efficiency savings by 2020, maybe 16 billion with a fair wind," The Guardian quoted one NHS figure as saying on Saturday.

"There’s no way we’ll achieve the £22bn. That’s pie in the sky," they added.

Unveiling the UK government’s budget earlier this month, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne confirmed an annual contribution of $15.3 billion to the NHS until 2020.

Prime Minister David Cameron had committed to fund the NHS with an extra $12.5 billion for the same period in his first speech since his Conservative Party’s election victory in May.

"Delivering the 22 billion pounds would involve unprecedented productivity gains. The 22 billion was overly ambitious and not very realistic," the publication quoted another senior NHS figure as saying.

Other recent findings also assessed that the NHS will most likely miss the $34-billion mark of efficiency savings by 2020.