George is an Associate Director at IFS, and leads the Institute’s work on healthcare. He joined the IFS in 2011. His research focuses on understanding variation in the returns from healthcare, exploring how patient outcomes vary across different healthcare providers and across different patient characteristics. Recent work includes an analysis of the spillovers between different types of health and social care, and quantifying the impact of waiting times targets in public hospitals. Ongoing projects examine the labour supply decisions of NHS hospital staff, analyse variation in the productivity of NHS staff, and explore inequalities in the use of publicly funded healthcare in England.
Education
PhD Economics, University College London, 2020
MSc (Distinction) Economics, University College London, 2011
BSc (1st Class) Economics, University College London, 2010
Below we outline an initial response from IFS researchers on the Liberal Democrat manifesto. We take a number of policy areas by turn but this is not a full assessment.
The Labour party has today announced their commitments for NHS spending over the next four years if they were to win the 2019 general election. These plans imply day-to-day NHS spending in England that is more generous than current government plans. This announcement also covers all parts of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) budget in England – including money for frontline day-to-day spending, other day-to-day spending and capital spending. We set out below the details of each of these in turn.
Funding the National Health Service is now the biggest single thing the government does. So how has health spending has changed over the last 70 years?
This IFS Public Talk, jointly organised with the University of Manchester and part of the 2019 ESRC Festival of Social Science, gave an economist's perspective on how we, as a country, can pay for our health and social care system.
In a new working paper we use new data to reconfirm the distinction between age and death costs, and importantly to highlight differences in average end of life costs between individuals with different characteristics.
Much of lifetime healthcare spending is concentrated at the end of life. This paper uses survey data linked to administrative hospital and mortality records to examine how the pattern of end-of-life hospital inpatient spending varies across different groups within a large public hospital system in England.
A healthier population is likely to be more economically productive (and to need less spending on healthcare and health-related benefits). A more prosperous society is likely to be healthier.
This is a chapter of The NHS at 70. To mark the BBC’s coverage of the NHS’s 70th birthday in July 2018, researchers from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Health Foundation, The King’s Fund and the Nuffield Trust have come together for the first time, using combined expertise to shed light on some of the big questions on the NHS.
How would you fund the NHS? Use this tool to try and reach these projected funding “targets” through increasing taxes and / or by cutting government spending in other areas.
To mark the BBC’s coverage of the NHS’s 70th birthday in July 2018, researchers from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Health Foundation, The King’s Fund and the Nuffield Trust have come together for the first time, using combined expertise to shed light on some of the big questions on the NHS.
Yesterday we heard the first details of a new five-year funding settlement for the NHS in England. It was announced NHS England funding would be slightly more than £20 billion higher in 2023-24 than in 2018–19 after adjusting for forecast economy-wide inflation over the period. This represents a larger increase in funding for the NHS than we have seen in the last 8 years, but remains below historical average growth in UK health spending (3.7% per year).
Following widespread austerity measures introduced in 2009/10, public funding for adult social care has fallen substantially. In particular, funding for social care for people aged 65 and older has been particularly hard hit, falling by 21% between 2009/10 and 2015/16. While some additional money in recent years has reversed some of these cuts, these funding decisions are likely to have had a number of consequences for users of social care, their carers and for other related public services. But what do we really know about their impact?
Public spending on social care for older people in England has seen large cuts in recent years, falling by 21% between 2009–10 and 2015–16. This has led to growing concerns over the potential for adverse effects on other public services, and in particular the NHS.
Recent years have seen substantial reductions in public spending on social care for older people in England. This has not only led to large falls in the number of people over the age of 65 receiving publicly funded social care, but also to growing concern about the potential knock-on effects on other public services, and in particular the National Health Service (NHS).
On 5 July this year the NHS will be 70. In all its 70 years it has rarely been far from the headlines. It has been through more than its fair share of reforms, crises and funding ups and downs. Over that period, the amount we spend on it has risen inexorably. Yet, today, concerns about the adequacy of funding are once again hitting the headlines, as the health and social care systems struggle to cope with growing demand.
On 5 July this year the NHS will be 70. In all its 70 years it has rarely been far from the headlines. It has been through more than its fair share of reforms, crises and funding ups and downs. Over that period, the amount we spend on it has risen inexorably. Yet, today, concerns about the adequacy of funding are once again hitting the headlines, as the health and social care systems struggle to cope with growing demand.
The emergency department (ED) is a complex node of healthcare delivery that is facing market and regulatory pressure across developed economies to reduce wait times. In this paper we study how ED doctors respond to such incentives, by focusing on a landmark policy in England that imposed strong incentives to treat ED patients within four hours.
