06.07.11
NHS funding picture ‘worst ever’ – chief executives survey
The NHS Confederation annual conference begins today in Manchester, as the organisation reveals the result of a survey of NHS chairs and chief executives showing financial pressures as an over-riding concern.
In his first major speech since becoming the organisation’s chief executive, Mike Farrar will say the results should represent “a loud wake-up call rather than a counsel of despair”.
He will also speak about the essential skills possessed by managers and call on ministers to stop demonising them, back growing calls for policy-makers to have the political confidence to close acute hospitals where necessary, and call for clarity as soon as possible on the practical impacts of the NHS reforms.
He plans to tell the 1,500 delegates: “I can't think of a more important NHS Confederation conference than this one. It comes at a time of unprecedented financial challenge, unprecedented and unwarranted attacks on managers, unprecedented confusion over policy and unprecedented nervousness about how we can deliver what's asked of us. The NHS is desperate for certainty and clarity. We need recognition of the enormous job we face and action to help, rather than hinder us, in delivering it.”
The survey shows that 89% of the 287 senior figures asked say the real-terms freeze in spending has produced “very serious” financial problems for their particular NHS organisation, and 42% say the situation is the “worst they have ever experienced”.
More than half believe waiting times will worsen, and one in five think quality of care will decline over the next year.
On the survey results, Farrar will say: “People will overlook these worrying results at their peril. This is the view of those who run the service, who will implement the reforms, and on whom the immediate future of the NHS depends. They are unconcerned with the political knockabout and they don't have the luxury of the armchair commentators. The picture they paint is of pressure on money now and of pressure on money mounting down the line. It is getting harder to maintain the great progress we have made on the quality of care, and there is now real concern about the speed of access to services. The NHS also feels pressure as a consequence of the difficult financial settlement for social care. This highlights that the NHS is not an island. The health and social care system has got to work together or it won't work at all.”
He will say that an organisation the size of the NHS, with £110bn of expenditure, needs a “proper level of management” if it is to succeed, noting that the NHS spends comparatively less on managers than other countries.
For coverage from the NHS Confederation conference, see the next edition of National Health Executive, and visit www.nhsconfed.org
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