The Health Secretary Wes Streeting is expected to tell hospital managers they will be sacked if they underperform on a new “NHS league table” of England’s hospitals, in a drive to inject more competition into the health sector.
Streeting, who is doing the media round this morning will reveal package of reforms and announce new league table of NHS providers and will announce that turnaround teams sent into struggling hospitals, while best performers given greater freedoms over funding to modernise technology and equipment
There will be no more rewards for failure, with reforms to ensure every penny of extra investment into NHS is well spent and waiting times for patients slashed
Addressing the nation’s health leaders at the NHS Providers’ annual conference in Liverpool, he will outline how government and NHS leaders have a duty to patients and taxpayers to get the system working well and get better value for money.
NHS England will carry out a no holds barred sweeping review of NHS performance across the entire country, with providers to be placed into a league table. This will be made public and regularly updated to ensure leaders, policy-makers and patients know which improvements need to be prioritised.
Persistently failing managers will be replaced and turn around teams of expert leaders will be deployed to help providers which are running big deficits or poor services for patients, offering them urgent, effective support so they can improve their service.
High-performing providers will be given greater freedom over funding and flexibility. There is little incentive across the system to run budget surpluses as providers can’t benefit from it. The reforms today will reward top-performing providers and give them more capital and greater control over where to invest it in modernising their buildings, equipment and technology.
The government will deliver a health service fit for the future, fixing the foundations while delivering change with investment and reform to deliver growth, get the NHS back on its feet, and rebuild Britain.
Wes Streeting told Sky News:
‘I’ve heard lots of criticism over the years that the NHS is too centralised, too much top-down command and control. Now I sit at the top of that system I not only recognise that criticism, I share it’
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.
