Improving quality in the NHS against a backdrop of tighter public finances will be best achieved when all NHS trusts have achieved foundation trust status, claimed a regulator this week.
Monitor, the foundation trust regulator, said that just over half of all NHS trusts have been successfully authorised by Monitor as foundation trusts but faster progress is required to complete the transition to an all foundation trust model.
Monitor’s Annual Report for 2008/09 describes how the regulator is responding to the challenges facing the NHS and urges all remaining NHS trusts not to lose focus in preparing their organisations for foundation trust status.
William Moyes, Monitor’s executive chairman, said: “Quick progress with ensuring that all hospitals are capable of being authorised as foundation trusts is essential to deliver Lord Darzi’s ambitious quality agenda and cope with future economic pressures.
“There is still some way to go before that is achieved. The half of our hospital system that has not yet managed to demonstrate that they can meet the leadership and financial standards required to become a foundation trust includes some of our largest and most complex hospitals.
“I very much hope that during 2009/10 we will see real progress with increasing the number of foundation trusts, particularly the larger teaching hospitals, and with developing realistic plans for those hospitals that are judged unlikely ever to be able in their present form to have the strength of governance and finance needed to secure authorisation.”
Tags: Foundation trusts
