Tories order biggest shake-up of NHS leadership in England for 40 years
Well all I can say is that this review needs to look through a rural as well as a political lens!
The Conservatives have ordered a shake-up of NHS leadership in England on the eve of their party conference, with Sajid Javid saying that with more funding must come “change for the better”.
The health secretary said he wanted to see the most far-reaching review of NHS bosses in England for 40 years, appointing a former vice-chief of the defence staff, Gen Sir Gordon Messenger, to lead the work.
However, some NHS bosses were furious about what they described as a political move to shift blame on to trust, hospital and social care leaders as the health service struggles with a big backlog.
Under the terms of the review, Messenger will be asked to look at the best hospitals, GPs’ services and social care delivery to work out how this can be replicated across the country.
Tory sources said it was not about a reorganisation of leadership structure or apportioning blame for failure but “identifying the best leadership, finding out why it’s so good and looking at how we roll it out more widely”. They said it was a key plank of “levelling up”.
No structural shake-up is expected in social care, it is understood, but the government could be open to more national leadership in the sector.
NHS bosses criticised the review as a “slap in the face” after the pandemic. Some said they saw it as a deliberate attempt to shift the blame for the health service’s fragility. In recent days Nottingham’s main acute NHS trust has had to cancel planned chemotherapy sessions due to a lack of nurses and East Surrey hospital declared a “critical internal incident”.