The new health secretary pledged to rid the NHS of superfluous national targets in favour of a set of clearer, simpler standards in his first major speech.
Andy Burnham, who was appointed in the Prime Minister’s cabinet reshuffle last week, explained that the Department of Health would be prioritising quality of care and patient empowerment as proposed in the Darzi Review.
He said: “So what does this mean for targets? I think it offers the chance to change the debate about targets fundamentally and deep clean the target regime so that it achieves what we all want: better patient care, more staff satisfaction.
“Targets have their time and place. When they meet, and where they are important, they should become permanent minimum service standards. But where they have served their purpose – and are subsidiary or contributory – they should be removed and believe me, I will do that.”
Speaking to managers at their annual conference, he outlined a new system of accountability for the NHS, based on a smaller number of agreed patient outcomes and fundamental rights. The NHS Constitution, with its patients’ rights, will sit alongside service guarantees linked to a minimum set of standards that will need to be maintained.
“We’ve got to make sure minimum standards are fairer and more focused on local contexts than the targets that precede them,” he said.
Burnham described the impact of the downturn on the NHS as a “moment of opportunity, not threat” and said that through improving the quality of services and developing a more preventative approach both efficiency and patient experience would be improved.
He also outlined his determination to introduce personal budgets for patients describing them as the “ultimate expression of power and influence being handed down to the individual patient”. The DoH is about to pilot the use of direct payments by patients for their care.
He said: “These pilots will give patients the power of the purse strings: making decisions with the help and guidance of GPs or consultants that directly affect how their own budget is spent.”
Commenting on his speech, HCSA chief executive Stephen Campion said: “If Andy Burnham now accepts that national targets need to be ‘deep cleaned’ and that many of them are superfluous, then I am delighted. I am only sorry that his predecessors failed to see the light as he appears to have done.
“The HCSA has consistently called for quality standards as opposed to dogmatic targets and we shall be very interested to see the extent to which this new approach is taken. I think this is a case of watch this space to see whether this policy change does actually happen.”
Tags: Personal budgets, Targets