NHS "productivity"?

Our national health industry is showing it's true colours, I think, when it employs terms like productivity. What exactly is it 'producing'? Would that be the thing that most taxpayers would want it to 'produce'?

Here we have a pretty graph showing the 'fall in productivity', and - quelle surprise! - I see the OECD [opens pdf] is a key - if not the key NHS 'productivity' hunter, with some pretty graphs of its own.

The NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement ("supporting the NHS to transform healthcare for patients and the public by rapidly developing and spreading new ways of working, new technology and world-class leadership." World class leadership?) penned an open letter this weekend, announcing a new software 'tool' to measure NHS 'productivity', and here is a list of NHS 'productivity' indicators, which includes:

Clinical productivity
Reducing length of stay
Increasing day case surgery rates
Reducing pre-operative bed days
Managing variation in surgical thresholds
Managing variation in emergency admissions
Managing variation in outpatient appointments
Finance
Achieving financial balance
Monitoring cash flow
Monitoring monthly "run rate"
Prescribing
Increasing low cost statin prescribing
Procurement
Uptake of national framework agreements

How much has all this cost? How much of NHS spending goes on administrators, and how much on actually treating the sick? How much of our National Health Service actually is a service? And how much is industry?

I don't want our NHS to produce anything or to lead the world in anything. I'd just like it to be there to provide essential nursing, surgery and emergency treatment to people who are actually, really ill. That's all.

I'd like to know how much profit is being creamed off and by whom and how much of our strange system of economy is tied up in NHS 'productivity'. It must be a relevant portion, for the OECD to take such an interest.