SCOTLAND’s Health Secretary has said there are “no plans” to introduce hospital league tables after NHS bosses hit out at plans to bring them in south of the Border.
UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting plans to publish football-style tables in England of the best and worst-performing hospitals and sack “persistently failing managers”, which has prompted fury from NHS chiefs who fear struggling trusts being “named and shamed”.
The league table will be based on metrics such as how long patients have to wait for A&E treatment, surgery and other care, the state of the trust’s finances and also how good its leadership is judged to be.
After being asked whether he could rule out such a policy being introduced in Scotland, Scottish Health Secretary Neil Gray said there was “no plans” to change the way health board performance is monitored.
He said: “We have the best performing core A&E departments in the UK and have done for the last eight years.
“We already have sufficient measures in place in Scotland to monitor and support health board performance – we have no plans to change this.
“Our NHS Scotland Support and Intervention framework guides our work with boards to identify and resolve issues as early and quickly as possible – with a focus on collaborative working.”
While the Scottish Government has given reassurance they don’t plan to introduce such a policy, The National is still awaiting a response from Scottish Labour after the Greens urged them to “come clean” on whether they support Streeting’s (below) measure.
“Scottish Labour must come clean and tell us if they support this dangerous policy, do they really want to turn Scotland’s health service into a game?”
As part of Streeting's plan, hospital trusts with good performance, or which raise themselves up the league table, will be rewarded with extra money to buy equipment and repair or construct facilities.
The move comes after former Labour health secretary Alan Milburn (below) was appointed as a non-executive director for the Department for Health and Social Care. During Milburn’s time as health secretary league tables were also brought into the NHS.
Streeting hopes to have the table ready to be published by the start of next April.
The plan has prompted anger from trust leaders, doctors and nurses, who voiced scepticism that publishing a league table would necessarily expand the provision of high-quality care.
“The prospect of more ‘league tables’ will concern health leaders, as these can strip out important underlying information,” said Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the hospitals group the NHS Confederation.
“NHS staff are doing their very best for patients under very challenging circumstances and we do not want them feeling like they are being named and shamed.”
