The health secretary has promised to cut long hospital waiting times back down to the NHS 18-week target via financial incentives and performance league tables.
At a speech today, Wes Streeting will say hospitals will no longer be rewarded for ‘failure’, with a ban on senior managers receiving pay rises at underperforming trusts.
Under the plans, ‘persistently failing’ NHS managers will be replaced, Mr Streeting will say, while ‘high-performing’ trusts will be given greater freedom over funding and flexibility.
Meanwhile, NHS England will carry out a review of hospital performance across the country, resulting in a league table that will be made public and regularly updated.
The Government is hoping that keeping hospitals to account financially will reduce waiting times for patients.
Mr Streeting said: ‘Today we are announcing the reforms to make sure every penny of extra investment is well spent and cuts waiting times for patients.
‘There’ll be no more turning a blind eye to failure. We will drive the health service to improve, so patients get more out of it for what taxpayers put in.
‘Our health service must attract top talent, be far more transparent to the public who pay for it, and run as efficiently as global businesses.
‘With the combination of investment and reform, we will turn the NHS around and cut waiting times from 18 months to 18 weeks.’
NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard said: ‘While NHS leaders welcome accountability, it is critical that responsibility comes with the necessary support and development.
‘The extensive package of reforms, developed together with government, will empower all leaders working in the NHS and it will give them the tools they need to provide the best possible services for our patients.’
The NHS Oversight Framework, which sets out how trusts and ICBs are best monitored, will be updated by the next financial year ‘to ensure performance is properly scrutinised’.
Under plans to be put forward for consultation in the coming weeks, NHS trusts could also be banned from using agencies to hire temporary entry level workers in band 2 and 3, such as healthcare assistants and domestic support workers.
The consultation will also include a proposal to stop NHS staff resigning and then immediately offering their services back to the health service through a recruitment agency.
The Labour Party’s manifesto had pledged to ‘cut NHS waiting times’ with ‘40,000 more appointments every week’, including via greater use of the private sector.
Last year, Mr Streeting said that under the Labour Party the NHS App would see a function added so patients could view GP performance and switch to the top provider.
A centralised bureaucracy with politicians dictating targets across the whole Country, and manager’s careers dependent on meeting those targets, the strategy that was so successful in the GDR.
What about the persistently failing political class we have? League tables will be a mismeasure and a distraction, and easily politicised and gamed. And grist for the chatterati media merrygoround. This is idiotic populism by Wes treating the public like morons. Talk about NHS reforms – Wait till the public vote Reform next election!