LABOUR Health Secretary Wes Streeting yesterday launched a new attack on the NHS.
While he noted the King’s Fund and Nuffield Trust survey reveals the biggest drop in dissatisfaction in the NHS since 1998, he announced an ‘NHS Intensive Recovery’ programme for the worst performing trusts in England from April.
The Department for Health and Social Care noted ‘some “challenged” trusts have continued to struggle – often because of a range of persistent and historic issues that have never been properly addressed.’
It added: ‘The new NHS Intensive Recovery programme has identified these trusts as those at the bottom of the new NHS league tables, facing the longest waits for care, persistent financial problems, and high leadership turnover.
‘The first wave of Trusts facing measures will include: North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust, Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust, Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust and East Kent Hospitals NHS Trust.
‘Each organisation will receive a tailored improvement approach, designed jointly with local leadership and focused on delivery.
‘This will include, changes of leadership where necessary at struggling Trusts, NHS veterans with a history of success brought into underperforming areas, the merging or separating Trusts so resources can be reallocated based on need, and improving access to capital for crumbling estates.’
Speaking at the University of East London yesterday, Streeting said: ‘The NHS is on the road to recovery, but there’s a lot of road ahead.
‘My foot is pressing down on the accelerator and I won’t stop until the job is done.
‘Right now, a cluster of high-performing Trusts are masking some chronic under-performance in other parts of the country.
‘Failure has been tolerated for too long. Staff know it. Patients feel it. And I won’t stand for it.
‘We won’t have succeeded in changing the NHS, until we change it for the patients who are suffering the worst services in the country.
‘In some places, so many years of poor service without improvement is feeding that sense of fatalism. They believe that after so long, it just can’t get better – in fact, they’ve never seen it get better.
‘That’s why I’ve announced today a new Intensive Recovery programme.
‘This will target the worst performing providers, sending in our best leaders or delivering the structural changes necessary to get them back on track. No more turning a blind eye to failure.’