Underperforming NHS hospitals will be revealed in league tables to ensure that there are ‘no more rewards for failure,’ the Health and Social Care Secretary, Wes Streeting, announced earlier today.
Speaking at the NHS Providers conference this morning, Streeting laid out plans to publish a football-style league table of the best- and worst-performing hospitals in England, based on a ‘no holds barred, sweeping review’.
Streeting said: ‘The Budget showed this government prioritises the NHS, providing the investment needed to rebuild the health service. 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.’
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Under the new plans, NHS trusts will be ranked on a range of indicators such as finances, delivery of services, patient access to care and the competency of leadership. Persistently failing managers will also be replaced and turnaround teams sent into trusts that are running big financial deficits or offering patients a poor service.
The Department of Health said there is currently little incentive for trusts to run budget surpluses as NHS trusts are unable to benefit from them. To address this, the best NHS performers will be given greater spending control to modernise their equipment and technology.
However, health leaders have cautioned that ‘naming and shaming’ may lead to unintended consequences.
Saffron Cordery, NHS Providers deputy chief executive highlighted the importance of addressing the root causes of the issue before threats to ‘sack failing managers’ are put on the table.
‘Trust leaders are highly accountable, subject to rigorous standards and stand ready to tackle the challenges ahead, as they have always been. League tables bring with them a significant risk of unintended consequences,’ she said.
Similarly, Thea Stien, chief executive of Nuffield Trust, warned: ‘There is a danger the actions announced by the secretary of state will worsen some of the patterns that got us into this mess. We know from the special measures for quality regime that “naming and shaming” NHS trusts can make it harder to recruit staff, which doesn’t help patient care at all. It’s unclear what new league tables will measure – a table based on general waiting times doesn’t add much if you need to know how good heart surgery is.’
Streeting defended his plans in a round of interviews this morning. Asked if the league tables would demoralise individuals, Streeting told the LBC news: ‘I’m not interested in humiliating individuals. What I am interested in is performance, managing poor leaders on and out of the NHS. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable thing when the average salary for very senior managers is £145,000 a year. The level of responsibility they carry is enormous. They’re responsible for a vital public service, and if they’re not up to it in a very professional way, we need to manage people onto another future.’