NHS productivity is static or falling according to the lastest estimate by national statisitations despite the record sums of money being invested into the health service.

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NHS Chief vows to cut waste and look to Toyota in efficiency drive

Pioneering techniques used by Toyota, Tesco, the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force are being adopted by the NHS to cut out waste and increase productivity, according to a report -Lean thinking for the NHS.

As the NHS steps up its battle to improve value for money, trust chief executives admitted they must increase productivity before they can make the case for extra funding, according to a survey released today at the NHS Confederations annual conference.

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Guide to

Measuring Productivity
What we produce and the wages it costs
Productivity and Unit Wage Costs are key economic indicators used to measure the efficiency and competitiveness of the economy. They are constructed as ratios of other indicators and are published as indices. Three measures of productivity are produced: output per worker, output per filled job and output per hour worked.

UK output per worker is calculated at the whole economy level only and is the ratio of Gross Value Added (GVA) at basic prices and Labour Force Survey (LFS) total employment.

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Members will have seen a number of articles in the Journal on the use of Lean Management. The term was born out of the production system established by Toyota in Japan in the 1950s and was to a large extent inspired by Kaizen -  the Japanese strategy of continuous improvement.

For those of you who are not familiar with these techniques,

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