MOSCOW, November 6 (RIA Novosti) — The UK National Health Service (NHS) is wasting millions on unnecessary clinical procedures the avoidance of which could help people receive much more efficient treatment and care, a report published on Thursday by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (AoMRC) said.
"Serious challenges exist that threaten the sustainability of services. To preserve the standards of care provided across the NHS, waste must be reduced. Most people think of waste in a product sense [e.g. why are we throwing that away when we didn't need to open the pack?]. However, most waste in the NHS lies within clinical practice and models of care. Low value services and unnecessary use of clinical resources undermine the sustainability of high value care and hinder the development of new interventions," the report stated.
According to the report, some $743 million could have been saved if the patients had not been prescribed drugs causing adverse reactions. Another expenditure of $352 million could have been avoided were patients across the United Kingdom not exposed to unnecessary radiological examinations. Overprescribing low-cost statins also resulted in waste, reaching about $135 million annually.
According to the Guardian's analysis, the NHS has wasted a total of $3.6 billion.
The AoMRC paper added that "doctors can provide a more effective use of constrained economic and environmental resources."
The NHS refers to the publicly funded health care system in the United Kingdom. The majority of the services it provides is free of charge for the country's population.
