Resource Allocation Working Party

The Resource Allocation Working Party was a group set up within the National Health Service in 1975 to suggest a mechanism whereby resources for secondary care could be matched to need (Gatrell, 2002).

Between 1948 and 1968 NHS financial allocations were essentially based on sequential inflation uplifts. A Regional Health Authority or Teaching Hospital could argue for an increase. The richer parts of the country had better funding in 1948 than the more deprived areas and so the differences between the various regions widened over time. In 1976-1977 there was an almost 30% difference in the revenue allocation between the 14 regions, with the North West having the least and North-East Thames region the most per head of population.

Richard Crossman developed a formula based on population, beds and cases but its fundamental problem was that the formula was partly based on utilisation and current resources. Since utilisation depends on availability of resources which were unequally distributed it could not rectify the problem. When Barbara Castle was Secretary of State for Health in 1972, the problem of regional resource inequality was addressed again. Her Special Adviser Professor Brian Abel-Smith had a particular interest in this problem (on which he had already advised Crossman, whose Special Adviser he had been earlier). He chaired the Advisory Committee to the Social Medicine and Health Services Research Unit at St Thomas' Hospital. He drew the attention of the Committee to the problems of resource allocation and encouraged them to consider possible research to rectify this unacceptable situation. They produced a proposal for a complicated randomised controlled trial of different funding formulae, but the Minister, David Owen, rejected it as interesting but politically impossible.

Owen established the Resource Allocation Working Party (RAWP), to examine the possibilities of a better funding formula. It came to the conclusion that Standardised Mortality Ratios were a reasonable indicator of regional variations in health care needs in the acute sector. The Report of the Working Party also emphasised the need to develop and apply positive preventive measures such as promoting changes in smoking habits and improving the environments in which people live and work.

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