Joint note by the ONS and NHS England.
Released on 13 February 2025
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes annual public service productivity analysis for all service areas in the UK, including healthcare. The methodology used for annual productivity analysis is considered "gold standard" and is the most robust productivity estimate available. The ONS, NHS England (NHSE), the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and University of York have been working to develop these methods further, as part of the National Statistician's Review, which commenced in 2023.
In a bid to drive transparency, NHSE regularly publishes in-year productivity reporting to help drive service improvement. This work has started with the productivity of the acute sector and is now being expanded for non-acute productivity reporting later this year. This will enable the NHS to track productivity movement in a more timely way. To assist this process, the ONS and University of York have worked together with NHSE to make improvements to all these measurements in the last nine months.
The ONS's recently published experimental quarterly productivity estimate also uses a different methodology to the annual approach. This simplified methodology was used for the first time this month as "official statistics in development" to launch a more timely quarterly time series. This is the first time the ONS has released quarterly data at the sector level, and is dependent on the data available at a point in time, and includes adjustments at an aggregate level to align to the annual series. The ONS is in the process of reviewing the new methodology under the Government Statistical Service Code of Practice to ensure the robustness and usability of the new quarterly estimates, including benchmarking to the annual statistics.
In particular, the ONS and NHSE have worked together to ensure consistent acute productivity measurement aligned with the ONS's annual approach, including weighting methodology, and application of adjustments (for example, inflation). In addition, NHSE has been able to make a number of methodological improvements to its own estimates (for example, the treatment of advice and guidance, and outpatient procedures) through better access to data, as well as more in-depth adjustments that more accurately capture the value of NHS services. However, the ONS and NHSE metrics do differ in important respects (particularly scope), relating to inclusion and exclusion of outputs and input. In summary, NHS England's current acute productivity focuses only on the acute sector and England. In comparison, ONS productivity measurement covers all sectors and the whole of the UK.
The ONS and NHSE are collaborating closely to ensure productivity measures produced for different purposes and with different scopes are coherent and can be utilised appropriately by the relevant stakeholders. NHSE's current in-year productivity methodology for the acute sector provides a robust assessment, which aligns to ONS methods and the ONS has been closely involved in the development of the non-acute productivity reporting. These, in particular the acute reporting, are broadly aligned with ONS's non-quality adjusted annual productivity reporting. The ONS is also committed to making continued improvement to annual and quarterly productivity reporting, working with NHSE and DHSC, through our ongoing collaboration.
As stated in ONS's bulletin, the annual estimate is considered the highest quality estimate, while the quarterly estimate is experimental in its current format and the ONS welcomes comments to support further work to develop these into accredited official statistics. The ONS and NHSE will continue to work closely to improve the measures and reconcile the data.