UK Government action to improve performance in English NHS hospitals

Citation

(2002), "UK Government action to improve performance in English NHS hospitals", International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 15 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijhcqa.2002.06215aab.010

UK Government action to improve performance in English NHS hospitals

UK Government action to improve performance in English NHS hospitals

The Government is taking action to improve performance in England's hospitals, following the first ever nation-wide assessment of performance in the NHS. The new performance ratings system gives stars for performance: three stars for the best performers and no starts for poorly performing trusts.

Each trust will receive its fair share of a £155m performance fund, and the best trusts will be free to spend the extra cash on developing services and rewarding staff. Poor performers will have their share of the performance fund deployed by the NHS Modernisation Agency.

The best performing trusts will be granted ten key freedoms:

1. 1.

   less frequent monitoring from the centre;

2. 2.

   fewer and better co-ordinated inspections;

3. 3.

   development of their own investment programmes without receiving prior approval;

4. 4.

   retention of more of the proceeds of local land sales for re-investment in local services;

5. 5.

   becoming pilot sites for new initiatives such as team bonuses for staff;

6. 6.

   extra cash for central programmes without having to bid for it;

7. 7.

   extra resources if they are required to take over and improve the performance of persistently failing trusts;

8. 8.

   the ability to create new "spin-out" companies to extend their research strengths, or sell services to other organisations. Profits from these ventures will be reinvested in patient care;

9. 9.

   the opportunity for chief executives to provide direct advice and input to ministers and the NHS chief executive in the preparation of new national policies and the review of existing ones; and

10. 10.

    the opportunity for chief executives to join the learning set which will consider additional freedoms for their organisations and an early involvement in the succession planning and development programme being constructed by the NHS Chief Executive Nigel Crisp.

Managers of persistently under performing hospitals will be given a deadline to improve performance – three months for existing managers, 12 months for new ones. If no improvements are made, the management of the hospital will be put out to franchise. Managerial teams will compete to take over the management of poorly performing trusts. There will be extra cash for doing so and the new managerial teams will have to deliver visible improvements in performance.

For this first year of the new ratings system, the trusts have been rated according to their performance on the things that matter most to patients, such as waiting times and hospital cleanliness. The independent Commission for Health Improvement has looked at the performance ratings for those organisations it has inspected and has confirmed that they provide a fair assessment based on the available data. However, the Department of Health will be working with the Commission to refine the criteria for assessing performance.

Secretary of State Mr Alan Milburn said:

Of necessity, since this is the first year these assessments have been made, they are far from perfect. They do not mean that a poorly performing hospital has low standards, is unsafe or does not contain some very good clinical services. Staff are often doing a good job but the assessments show that organisational performance does need to improve.