Why has hospital activity not increased in line with funding and staffing?

This report – written jointly by the Institute for Government and Public First, and funded by The Health Foundation – assesses why NHS hospitals are failing to deliver higher activity despite higher spending on the service and higher levels of staffing over the past couple of years. It argues that politicians need to focus on capital investment, staff retention and boosting management capacity, and sets out key questions for policy-makers to address if they want to solve the NHS crisis. It finds that most of the challenges identified in the report existed before the pandemic and have been exacerbated since.