Friday, November 24, 2006

NHS value for money?

A new cancer centre is to be built at Taunton's Musgrove Park hospital:

Construction costs: £12m
Specialist Equipment: £10m
Total cost: £22m

Cost to the taxpayer over thirty years: £100m

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Health service should be calculated on provided a good service, rather than costs, but I know it doesn't work that way.

Snafu said...

Ellee, cost management is important for any commercial organisation, less so for a publicly funded organisation.

My primary concern with PFI is that the Government should always take the long term view! It would be far better value for the taxpayer to pay for the construction and equipment themselves without resorting to PFI.

Gordon Brown prefers the PFI route as it flatters current Government borrowing despite mortgaging tax revenues for the next thirty years!