Counter Accounting and Counter Accountability: A Post‐COVID‐19 Study of England's Hospital Infrastructure Crisis.
Post‐COVID‐19 England's health‐care system remains in crisis, with growing waiting lists for elective care and rising backlog maintenance in its hospital infrastructure. The government indicates that its delivery plan issued in 2022, involving additional funding and greater use of the private sector...
| Publicado en: | Abacus Vol. 61; no. 1; pp. 93 - 121 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Wiley-Blackwell
Mar2025
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=183756336&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 183756336 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00013072 AUB jtl: Abacus issn: 00013072 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: Mar2025 vid: 61 iid: 1 pid: 480 pub: Wiley-Blackwell artinfo: ui: 183756336 10.1111/abac.12345 ppf: 93 ppct: 28 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: C – @attributes: type: P size: 360KB tig: atl: Counter Accounting and Counter Accountability: A Post‐COVID‐19 Study of England's Hospital Infrastructure Crisis. aug: au: Stafford, Anne affil: Alliance Manchester Business School su: COVID-19 pandemic Public health infrastructure Political accountability Private sector Financial accountability Budget cuts Great Britain. National Health Service National health services England sug: subj: England COVID-19 pandemic Public health infrastructure Political accountability Private sector Financial accountability Budget cuts Great Britain. National Health Service National health services keyword: Counter accounting Health care Post‐COVID‐19 Public accountability Public‐private partnerships/Private finance initiative ab: Post‐COVID‐19 England's health‐care system remains in crisis, with growing waiting lists for elective care and rising backlog maintenance in its hospital infrastructure. The government indicates that its delivery plan issued in 2022, involving additional funding and greater use of the private sector, will tackle this problem. Framed as a consequence of the pandemic, in England, such a framing denies the historic problem of underfunding as well as the rise of financialization. Notably public accountability for health care has received little prominence over the past decade. This study uses an approach based on counter accounting to challenge the prevailing hegemony of English National Health System (NHS) health‐care infrastructure policy and offers a counter‐explanation of the current hospital infrastructure crisis. It examines an alternative set of evidence drawn from publicly available financial statements and other documents to make visible data relating to hospital infrastructure capital and revenue costs. This shows that health care has been systematically underfunded since the start of austerity in 2010, and that even additional funding during COVID‐19 was insufficient to make up the shortfall. Previously weakened accountability mechanisms have been further displaced from the public eye by the rhetoric around COVID‐19, meaning there is little challenge of private sector legitimacy in public health‐care provision, despite its financialized nature. The study considers that instigating strong oversight and evaluation of hospital infrastructure policy is necessary as over the next decade many private sector contracts will terminate and funding is likely to be in short supply. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Abacus is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Abacus holder: Wiley-Blackwell dt: @attributes: year: 2025 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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