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Hospital bosses in England will be judged against far fewer targets than before under plans by health secretary Wes Streeting to reform the NHS.
Officials said new guidance for health service leaders set to be released this month by the Labour government will contain about 16 targets compared with 32 in last year’s document, which was published under the previous Conservative government.
The updated annual guidance will also contain fewer “national priorities”, which are broader NHS goals, but major objectives on A&E waiting times and reducing waiting lists will be retained, according to government officials.
One official said: “The instructions to the NHS will be stripped down, focused on what matters most to patients — improving access to GPs and dentists, and cutting waiting times for operations and urgent and emergency care”.
The NHS is at the core of Labour’s plan to retain power at the next UK general election, with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer hoping voters will reward his government if it improves the performance of the health service.
Streeting has vowed that by the end of this parliament 92 per cent of patients will begin treatment for an ailment or get the all-clear within 18 weeks. This NHS target was last met at the end of 2015.
Currently just 59 per cent of non-urgent referrals are treated within this timeframe, according to the latest NHS data for November 2024.
Earlier this month, the government set an interim target of referrals for 65 per cent of patients to be met by March next year.
The health service received a £22.6bn rise in its day-to-day spending allocation over two years in the October Budget and a £3.1bn increase in its capital allowance, as the government seeks to reduce the backlogs.
The Health Foundation think-tank has identified a “significant gap” between the 2mn additional appointments that ministers have pledged in the first year of this parliament and the number that will be needed to meet the 18-week target by 2029, the last year by which Starmer must hold an election.
Assuming new patient referrals rise 1.5 per cent annually, the think-tank estimates that the number of additional appointments needed to reduce the backlog will need to rise incrementally and reach around 10mn in the last year of this parliament, which would leave the service about 8mn additional appointments short in 2029.
In 2023, a government-commissioned review led by former Labour health secretary Patricia Hewitt recommended that ministers “significantly reduce” the number of national NHS targets.
Hewitt warned that an “excessive” focus on hitting these could lead to “gaming” of the targets or “even a disastrous neglect of patients themselves”.
Siva Anandaciva, chief analyst at The King’s Fund, noted: “There is a place for targets in healthcare but we tend to create too much of a culture of fear around them.”
He added: “They are touted as information to help services benchmark, improve and learn, but all too often they end up as ‘P45 targets’ with CEOs losing their jobs for underperformance.”
The Department of Health and Social Care welcomed the Health Foundation report, saying it confirmed they were on course to deliver an extra 2mn operations, scans, and appointments in the Labour government’s first year.
“We will create millions more appointments to get patients seen more quickly,” a spokesperson said.
“Our work is already having an impact and the overall waiting list is falling, but we know there is much more to do as we deliver the radical reforms needed to rebuild the broken elective care system.”
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