The Department for Health and Social Care has introduced series of new reforms that will help to tackle the crisis within the NHS, ensuring that there will be ‘no more rewards for failure.’
These reforms were announced as the Health Secretary addressed health leaders from across the country at the NHS Providers’ annual conference, outlining the duty that the government and NHS leaders have to patients to ensure that the system returns to working efficiently.
As part of the measures, NHS England will carry out a ‘no holds barred’ review of NHS performance across the country, which will see providers placed into a league table that can be viewed publicly and will be regularly updated. This will ensure that leaders, policy-makers, and patients know where improvements should be prioritised. Managers that are failing persistently will be replaced, with teams of experts being deployed to turn around the fortunes of those providers that are offering poor services for patients. Failing managers will also be ineligible for pay increases.
The reforms are not all negative, however, as high-performing providers will be given more freedom over their funding and flexibility. This comes as there is currently little incentive for providers to run budget surpluses, however they will now be rewarded with the power and flexibility to use this surplus to invest in buildings, equipment, and technology.
Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, said:
“The Budget showed this government prioritises the NHS, providing the investment needed to rebuild the health service. 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.”
Currently, the health service’s cost for hiring temporary workers is around £3 billion a year, however the new plans that will be put forward for consultation could see trusts banned from using agencies to hire temporary entry level employees in bands two and three.
In response to the announcement, CEO and Co-Founder of Patchwork Health, Dr Anas Nader, said:
“Wes Streeting’s crusade against excess agency spending is a worthy one, but as the Government takes up this cause, it must not alienate healthcare staff by creating unnecessary divisions between them. There is logic behind the agency reality and a place for them in a healthy system - we won’t gain from demonising the concept of temporary staffing.
"Current staffing costs are clearly unsustainable, but any attempt to fix the problem can’t ignore the very real challenges which are pushing staff to agencies in the first place and driving hospitals to overly rely on their services. Without first addressing the chronic lack of flexibility and extreme burnout in our NHS workforce, we will continue to see talented colleagues leave the service, giving managers no choice but to continue playing this expensive game of whack-a-mole.”
Image credit: iStock
