Health Foundation

But compare this to other initiatives, including resource through third sector efforts, uh, like Bloomberg Philanthropies, which is funding a three-year program with LSE Cities and the School of Public Policy that combines executive education, coaching, and consultancies for mayors and senior officers with action research running alongside it.

The Health Foundation has just completed a three-year mayoral regions program led by West Midlands Combined Authority with eight other mayoral regions, building cross-regional communities of practice and embedding health considerations into core functions.

Three years ahead, externally funded and designed so that something remains afterwards, against six to nine months of borrowed staff.

And the stakes have gone up with new MSAs on the way and a program of fiscal devolution championed by the Prime Minister.

The NHS can prevent 20,000 deaths and save £33 billion a year through improved productivity.

Sounds too good to be true? Well, the Health Foundation has set out how it could be done.

The Senior Economic Advisor, Anita Charlesworth, is joining us to set out the key steps to success.

And we'll look at the findings of the Thirlwall inquiry into the events surrounding Lucy Letby killings at the Countess of Chester Hospital.

What will they mean for NHS leaders and managers? We'll hear from the NHS Alliance's chief executive, Sir Ciaran Devan.

First, though, huge economic benefits and better patient care are there for the taking through a fundamental rewiring of the NHS to improve its productivity.

That's according to the Health Foundation's NHS Productivity Commission.

set out proposals to unlock technology, empower staff and increase capital investment to deliver annual savings of £33 billion by 2040 and resulting in about 20,000 fewer deaths each year as people are helped to live longer, healthier lives.

Productivity.

How much bang do we get for our NHS buck? Is the system efficient and can it be made more efficient? Well, the Health Foundation has attempted to find the answer to this and other questions through its NHS Productivity Commission, whose report has just been published.

It's called Breaking the Cycle, How to Build a More Productive NHS, and it sets out an ambitious set of recommendations designed to result in up to 20,000 fewer deaths each year from treatable causes, and on average, an additional four and a half years that people spend in good health.

Quite an exciting prospect.

Our guest is ideal to help us get to the heart of all this.

Anita Charlesworth, CBE, is the Commission's co-chair and senior economic advisor to the Health Foundation.

In this endeavour, she was joined by Tara Alice, CBE, a well-known and respected British-Finnish economist and senior advisor to McKinsey's, and by eight other commissioners, all with expertise in this area.

Before we start to explore this fascinating report with Anita, perhaps we need to be clear what we, and indeed the Commission, mean by productivity.