Press release: Confederation welcomes transition from targets to standards but warns of trap of creating a different form of burden
11 Feb 2004
The NHS Confederation today welcomed the publication of the NHS consultation paper about health care standards with a smaller number of understandable standards but warned the challenge would be to avoid proliferation of measures in the implementation of the new approach.
The Confederation supported CHAI's commitment to develop a different, less mechanistic approach to setting the detailed criteria which will underpin the standards. Gill Morgan, Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation, said: 'CHAI must avoid the trap of creating a different form of regulatory burden. The signals so far are good - their desire to use more self-assessment and criteria relevant to patients and clinicians is the right approach. We welcome the genuine desire to reduce centralist control and bureaucracy but together CHAI and DH face a cultural revolution - it is easy to promise a cut in bureaucracy but harder to deliver."
The problem with the previous approach to targets was not the relatively small number of high level PSA targets (12) but the way they were cascaded through the system proliferating in number to 44 in the Planning and Priorities Guidance to around 300 on the ground level.
The Confederation said that it is a very positive move to have explicit and understandable standards using domains relevant to patients and clinicians and to separate core and developmental standards.
Gill Morgan said, "The transition from targets to standards will reflect the changing NHS, as we seek to deliver responsiveness and improve the health of the public, it will be vital to have standards which are owned and locally driven."
ENDS
Notes for editors
- The NHS Confederation represents the organisations that make up the NHS. Our ordinary members include the majority of NHS trusts, primary care trusts and strategic health authorities in England; trusts and local health boards in Wales; trusts and NHS boards in Scotland; and health and social service trusts and boards in Northern Ireland.
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