NHS patients are set to benefit from an extra £8bn investment in the NHS over the next 12 months.
The majority of the money will be spent on frontline services for patients, and decisions on how the money is spent will mostly be taken by local GPs, consultants and managers, who are best placed to know what their communities need.
Overall, the increased investment will mean that an extra 400,000 people can be seen as outpatients and 390,000 more operations will be able to go ahead.
Waiting times will be cut further, hospital infections will be tackled and more personalised care will be provided for people with long-term conditions.
Examples of local projects benefiting from the extra funding include:
- £375,000 investment in the East Midlands to train more ambulance staff to diagnose and treat patients in their own home without the need for hospital transfers.
- £50,000 investment in new testing equipment in the Plymouth area to provide test results for MRSA and other infections in two to three hours, rather than two to three days.
- A £1m “virtual community ward” project in Croydon to support people with long-term conditions in the community instead of hospitals £1.6m investment in new GP services in Barking and Dagenham to improve provision in an underdoctored area.
Details of how the extra money will be spent are contained in a new report, Local Spending for Local Needs.
