14 July 2006
Patient care will improve only if hospitals are honest about the quality of the services they provide, the NHS Confederation said this week.
The managers' body put a positive spin on trusts' admission of failings against 44 core standards set by the government. Overall, only a third of the 569 acute, ambulance, mental health and primary care trusts in England told the Healthcare Commission they were meeting all the standards. Ten trusts did not achieve 14 or more of the targets – the Commission's threshold for failure under the self-assessment regime.
The standards are grouped into seven areas, including patient focus, safety and clinical and cost effectiveness. The latter area included a declaration on introduction of technology approved by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence – 27 trusts admitted they had not done so, while a further 61 said they could not be sure.
The statements will worry ministers, who are trying to win back public and staff support for their NHS reforms. There will be concern that some trusts are ill-prepared for a further set of tougher standards in safety, clinical and cost effectiveness, public health and patient focus that are due to be introduced this year.
Confederation chief executive Gill Morgan said greater transparency was welcome. 'The publication of these declarations is good news for patients and the public because they will provide them with more meaningful information about the performance of their local hospital and health services. In a world of increased choice for patients this can only be a good thing,' she said.
'The only way the service will achieve real improvements for patients is by being frank about the problems and challenges that it faces.'
The self-assessment process is part of the Commission's new light touch regulation regime and Anna Walker, its chief executive, was encouraged that trusts failing to meet the standards had 'put their hand up'.
The Commission will now screen the declarations to assess their accuracy before inspecting 20% of the trusts – around half of which will be where the Commission suspects declarations to be inaccurate. The declarations will be used to produce the Commission's first annual health check ratings, which will be published in October.
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