AN “extra chunk of money” is needed to rectify underinvestment in Health, the department’s minister has said, despite a new report revealing that Jersey spends more of its budget on healthcare than any other jurisdiction in the OECD.
The Government Employment, Revenue and Expenditure report, published this week, showed that 28.5% of the Island’s government expenditure in 2021 went on Health – higher than the proportion spent by countries and regions in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, including 20.5% in the UK, 21.2% in Ireland, 15.3% in Malta, 15.6% in France and the EU average of 15.8%.
This does not mean that Jersey’s government spends more on each Islander’s healthcare than in the UK. Rather, when adjusted to spend per person, Jersey’s and the UK’s government spends roughly the same at around $5,000 per person.
Health Minister Tom Binet said that the skew was due to economies of scale, and that Jersey spent less in other areas, such as public services and defence.
He further explained: “We’re trying to provide a comprehensive hospital service for 100,000 people on an island where we have no advantage in terms of scale.”
He highlighted that Jersey was spending marginally less per capita on Islanders’ healthcare than the UK and that an NHS hospital in the UK would typically serve more people than the Jersey General Hospital.
Deputy Binet said: “What we have to do over the next couple of years is to make the health service as comprehensive and efficient as we can.
“And if we want a really first-class health service, we may have to look at additional ways of funding it.
“There’s going to be a big focus on private health insurance as part of that, but we need to ascertain how much we really do need to run a good health service and decide over the coming year how we’re going to go about achieving that extra funding. What’s become apparent to me, in the few weeks I’ve been in this role, is that we have underinvested in Health. We haven’t had sufficient focus on keeping pace with developing the health service.
“We haven’t had enough focus on where our health service is going, with a clear plan for it. We’re not in the best situation. There are a number of issues to be resolved and a lot of catch-up work to be done, both in the way that things are managed, and the investment that’s required in certain areas to bring us up to speed.”
The minister added: “I seriously believe we may have to find a chunk of extra money in the short to medium term to overcome some of the hurdles to bring us up to date, after which health funding levels will settle.
“If we don’t get our preventative actions up to date, in terms of illness prevention, we’re going to be playing catch-up forever. And there are various programmes we need to introduce to get us up to date with the full level of healthcare that we need.”
