Stephen Thornton, Chief Executive of The Health Foundation has responded to the recent Government announcement to replace managers at failing trusts .
Health minister Ben Bradshaw laid out the details of the new management plans, which include recruiting top-level executives from private companies like Bupa or from successful hospitals elsewhere in the NHS.
There will also be an opportunity for the failing hospitals to be merged with neighbouring Foundation Trusts with a proven record of success.
Commenting on this latest performance regime Stephen Thornton said: “These proposals are yet another example of the Government focusing unduly on a tiny number of failing institutions. By doing so, they lose sight of the bigger picture of how to improve performance across the health service.”
He urged the Government to drive up standards across the whole health service and asked, “What are they doing to help the fair-to-good to become excellent? What are they doing to encourage the excellent to seek out best practice from across the world, not become complacent?”
“What is clearly needed is a more balanced view of how they look at performance across the health service”, he said, “with solutions that support and incentivise clinicians and managers to make improvements in their local setting.”