All hospitals would be forced to reduce the costs of operations to the lowest tariff in the country under controversial plans by the Liberal Democrats to cut waste in the public services.
As Britain prepares for the tightest spending round in a generation, the Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg, this week will outline plans to rein in hospital trusts that are using their monopoly position to drive up costs. The plan will be seen as one of the most radical ideas of any of the main political parties to save money.
Under the Lib Dem plan, hospital trusts would be forced to charge the same rate for operations as the cheapest and most efficient hospitals in the country.
Clegg said: “It is a very specific but rather radical idea, of saying that all hospital tariffs under the ‘payment by results’ system should match the most efficient tariffs in the hospital system. We think that would save about £2bn a year.”
Clegg admitted this would be controversial because many hospitals would say they could not compete with those that reduced costs by performing many more procedures. He said the policy would be flexible and standards would not suffer. “There has to be suppleness in it,” Clegg said. “We are not going to be stupid about it.”
Read more at The Guardian.
