Thursday 14 November 2024
League tables to compare hospital performance could take away focus from deeper systemic issues affecting Urgent and Emergency Care.
This is the response from The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) following the announcement by the Department of Health and Social Care of measures to incentivise performance improvements across Trusts.
Speaking at the NHS Providers Conference in Liverpool yesterday (13 November 2024), Health Secretary Wes Streeting MP also revealed plans to give greater freedoms and funding incentives to high performing Trusts and “weed out” poor performing senior managers.
However, RCEM have expressed concerns that the plans could take focus away from systemic issues such as improving social care capacity and could affect recruitment in already struggling hospitals.
Dr Adrian Boyle, President of The Royal College of Emergency Medicine said: “Measuring poor performance is challenging as hospitals have been merged into multi-site trusts. For example, you might have a trust that runs multiple emergency departments, and this can be difficult to compare. That is one of the reasons we are asking for data for each individual hospital to be made available. This would easily create the transparency that the Secretary of State desires.
“There is also the risk of short-term target chasing instead of focusing on wider systemic issues needed such as improvements in social care capacity, crumbling estate and poor IT.
“We know that A&E staff are already working at maximum capacity in extremely challenging conditions, and we are worried this focus on performance could lead to recruitment and retention issues in already struggling hospitals.
“We welcome to focus on giving more power to local health boards, but no amount of performance incentive can replace the need for more beds and staff. We hope these changes will be accompanied by the whole system improvements promised by the new government.”
