Regulators to take over NHS services in three English regions
This article highlights an approach which has had relatively limited publicity. There is a large rural dimension to all three areas where what appears to be a very “absolutist” solution is being applied. Local democracy is sometimes messy but its invariably good for us!
NHS regulators are to push through major changes to how hospitals and GP services are run in whole parts of England where services have been beset by major problems for years.
The unprecedented move will see three key national NHS bodies intervene to dictate how all local services tackle longstanding problems such as understaffing, financial trouble and poor care.
The new “success regime” will be applied first to three areas of England – Essex, North Cumbria and North, East and West Devon – where previous efforts have failed to produce improvements.
But it is understood that it may be extended to other places, including Kent and Staffordshire, where hospitals in particular have racked up mounting debts, struggled to cope with rising demand for care and had difficulties in delivering key waiting time targets, such as for A&E and cancer patients.
Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, outlined the move on Wednesday in a speech to 3,000 local NHS leaders gathered in Liverpool for the NHS Confederation’s annual conference.
The new scheme is different to the “special measures” regime that Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, introduced for individual failing hospitals after Robert Francis QC’s landmark report in 2013 into the Mid Staffs scandal.
What the NHS is calling “whole-systems intervention” is needed because often problems besetting one hospital are part of wider problems in their locality, Stevens said. The various acute hospitals in Essex are understood to be about £150m in deficit, for example.