After four years of consistent growth, how did total spend by NHS organisations fare in 2020/21?
The 2020/21 Financial Year was heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, which of course had a significant impact on the NHS. Oxygen’s Illuminator system – which provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date source of public sector spend data by aggregating and categorising the invoice data disclosed by well over 1000 organisations – is now able to highlight where NHS expenditure was concentrated during this period. In previous years, total NHS spending has consistently increased by an average of 5-8% year-on-year, however, Illuminator shows that 2020/21 saw this sustained level of growth reduce to 2.35%.