The involvement of health professionals and patients in designing their own healthcare service could save the NHS more than £20bn by 2014, according to a report by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta) .
The report, The Human Factor: How transforming healthcare to involve the public can save money and save lives, is published today and argues that the UK needs a new approach to major health challenges, such as obesity and alcohol consumption.
Authors Laura Bunt and Michael Harris says that placing responsibility in the hands of the public, an approach already being pioneered in several places, including Birmingham and Kent, has the potential to reduce the biggest cost to the NHS, that of treating long-term conditions, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity.
New forms of healthcare, delivered by people who understand such conditions could save the NHS at least £6.9bn a year - 10% of its annual budget - a figure described as a "modest" projection by the authors.
Launching the report, Nesta's chief executive, Jonathan Kestenbaum, said adopting radical new ways of doing things could mean the NHS would not have to make difficult choices about cutting costs.
But the report acknowledges that it is difficult inside the existing NHS to develop patient-centred services and to persuade people to change their behaviour. These programmes can succeed only if clinicians and patients are in control, says the authors, adding that Nesta's experience of helping clinicians develop new services "suggests that all too often the realities of NHS management structure stand in the way".
It cites schemes such as the The Buddy Scheme in Kent, where patients with mental health problems mentor student nurses, as well as occupational therapy and social work students, to give them a better understanding of mental illness, and a programme for people in Birmingham with coronary heart disease and other conditions, where people obtain advice over the phone from a team of care managers on taking action to improve their health and manage their own conditions.
The report's authors say that if the cost of treating mental illness could be reduced by only 5% that would be a potential saving of £700m for the NHS. Initial evaluation of Kent's scheme showed that 75% of participants had reduced their use of mental health services.
