Trusts deemed by the Department of Health to be “failing” could soon see their management removed and a new team brought in from other parts of the NHS, NHS Foundation Trusts, or the private sector, under plans announced by Health Minister Ben Bradshaw (pictured).
The DH simultaneously set out insolvency principles for Foundation hospitals and non-Foundation Trusts to ensure borrowing does not put NHS assets or continuity of services at risk. Ben Bradshaw said: “The NHS has come a long way in the last ten years,” and continued: “However there are still unacceptable variations in performance.
This new guidance sets out how we will tackle poor performance and the turnaround regime we are establishing for those hospitals and primary care Trusts identified as falling below minimum standards.”
The “three main options” open to the NHS where Trusts are deemed to be “failing” are:
- New NHS management, drawn from “the top management pool”.
- NHS Foundation Trust management, deployed to Trusts through a merger of hospitals where an appropriate Foundation Trust is willing to take on this role.
- Private sector management, provided on the basis of a management contract.
Later this year the Department says it will publish the quality, safety and financial criteria via which underperformance and failure will be determined and reveal how many Trusts are not meeting them. Primary care Trusts and hospitals will be judged against “different but similarly challenging criteria”.
