The debate came during a panel session at today's Policy Forum for Wales keynote seminar.

Dr Robert Royce, honorary senior lecturer at Swansea University, said: ‘No-one really has the answer to the conumdrum about how you get a public service to operate in the way the private service is.'

Dr Royce suggested the introduction of financial incentives for the NHS to see more patients, highlighting that running a system on a payment by allocation basis rather than by payment by results was not a good way to encourage efficiency.

‘The system is all based on block allocations which is not a good financial system when you want providers to do more work,' he said.

‘There is no easy answer to it because you're never going to get the public sector to run exactly the same way the private sector does because they have different sets of incentives and financial constraints,' he concluded.

Earlier during his presentation, Dr Royce said: ‘We have a huge productivity issue in NHS Wales and yet health boards don't seem to be doing much in terms of looking at the issue, let alone addressing it.'

The academic said productivity was mentioned just 82 times in 4,000 pages of board papers for the seven health boards in Wales in January.