It seems that everywhere we look there are stories about the funding crisis in the NHS and how we must make savings. Now, I love the NHS its been part of my life for over half of my life so I want to do what I can to save it, but the more I look the more I think: we waste such a lot of money, perhaps if we wasted less we would have to save less? Take, for example, the paper by Guest et al (2016), which identified how few patients have a proper assessment, diagnosis and treatment and therefore fail to heal for a year or 2 years or even longer if we just provided their care appropriately in the first place, how much money would we save? I hear examples from clinicians all the time of local activities that save significant amounts of money if we all did them, it would really make a difference.
