Press release: Prepare for a turbulent future - says NHS Confederation Chief

15 Jun 2006

Today, at the NHS Confederation annual conference in Birmingham Dr Gill Morgan, chief executive, will tell delegates to prepare for a turbulent future as the next two years will be amongst the most challenging the service has had to face.

Dr Morgan will use her speech to tell delegates that we need increased local autonomy because that is the best way of meeting financial challenges and delivering patient safety.

Over the next two years, as well as dealing with the current financial problems, NHS managers will need to address the 18 week target, the implementation of financial systems like payment by results and the expectation that trusts will make year on year efficiency gains. Implementing any one of these changes would be a challenge, but NHS managers will need to deal with all of them.

To help them in their task, NHS management is calling on the government to:

• Ensure better alignment of policies and incentives
• Provide political support for service changes which may be unpopular such as changed roles for some hospitals
• Change central management style to reduce the blame culture and give greater weight to the responsibilities of boards and local management
• Recognise that not everything can be achieved in one year
• Have a more realistic approach to historic deficits

Dr Gill Morgan will say:

"It has been a tough year for the NHS. And the next two years will be amongst the most challenging we have ever had to face.

"Worryingly nurses and doctors are not buying into the reform agenda and are worried about deficits and job losses. We cannot ignore the anger and frustration expressed. People don't know where the reform agenda is taking us because we haven't told a compelling story and set out a vision of the health service we want to see.

"Whilst some of this requires political clarity we too share the responsibility for clarifying what it means to patients and how things will be different. We need a vision that inspires us to improve rather than pushes compliance to what will inevitably become the lowest common denominator."

ENDS

 

Notes for editors

1.      The NHS Confederation represents more than 90 per cent  of the organisations that make up the NHS. Its members include the majority of NHS acute trusts, ambulance trusts, foundation trusts, mental health trusts, primary care trusts, special health authorities and strategic health authorities in England; trusts and local health boards in Wales; and health and social service trusts and boards in Northern Ireland. 

Contact details

Contact Media Relations Manager Joanna Clason on 020 7074 3306 or 07798 571078 or Senior Media Officer Amy Darlington on 020 7074 3304 or 07767 770309.

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