NHS is told to think radically and move quickly to survive public spending squeeze

The time has come for some radical thinking and nimble footwork if the health service is to survive the squeeze on public spending without compromising the quality of care, NHS leaders have warned.

Speaking in Liverpool last week at the annual conference of the NHS Confederation, the representative body for most NHS organisations, Mike Farrar, chief executive of NHS North West, said that the NHS faced a “very, very difficult” future with the enforced contraction of public sector spending.

“If the recession has any benefit, it’s that it can be a great catalyst for doing things differently,” he said. “Arguably, we should have been doing for the past five years what we are going to have to do …