Streeting to unveil extra investment for English hospitals that cut waiting times fastest

Open Editor’s Digest for free

FT editor Rula Khalaf picks her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Hospitals in England that deliver the fastest improvements in care waiting times will be rewarded with millions of pounds of extra investment in buildings and equipment, Wes Streeting will announce on Monday.

The Health Secretary’s move aims to encourage NHS chiefs to meet a target of 92 per cent of patients waiting no more than 18 weeks to start non-urgent treatment after being referred to a consultant.

Last month, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer injected new urgency into the standard, first set by Tony Blair two decades ago, when he named it one of his administration’s six “straight lines” and promised it would be met by 2018. the current parliament.

But the benchmark has not been achieved for nearly 10 years as austerity, the pandemic and increased demand from an aging and growing population have added to the pressure on health services.

Ahead of Monday’s announcement, Department of Health officials told the Financial Times that extra funding for capital projects such as new high-tech scanners or much-needed ward maintenance would be available to NHS trusts that have made the biggest improvements to the 18-week treatment standard :

Performance will be measured by the percentage of patients seen within that time frame, they said.

The appeal of additional capital funding will be reflected in a service that has long lagged behind comparable countries in terms of investment in infrastructure.

In a government-commissioned report last year, surgeon and former health minister Lord Ara Darzi found: capital shortfall of around £37bn.

Streeting said some hospital trusts were already leading the way, operating in “innovative, more efficient ways. This Government will support them with new capital investment and let them build on that”.

Trusts that treated more patients should be paid more for their work, “and good performance should be rewarded to incentivize great performance, so we reduce waiting times”, he added.

The proposal will form part of an optional reform plan to be published by the government and the NHS on Monday, which will set out how the NHS will return to the 18-week standard.

The vote comes under the £25.6 billion announced for the NHS in October’s Budget. Ministers say the extra money will help fund an extra 2 million appointments over the course of a year, but health chiefs have warned: “confusion” about whether to prioritize hitting performance targets or winterizing admissions.

At the end of October, the most recent figures available, patients were waiting for 7.54 million procedures and appointments, with about 40 percent of people waiting more than 18 weeks.

The pressures on the NHS were highlighted by data on Friday which showed a a sharp increase in flu cases during the holiday season. More than 5,000 patients were admitted to hospital with the virus at the end of last week, almost 3.5 times more than the same week in 2023.

Ministers also face a backlash from campaigners and opposition parties after Streeting said on Friday that a new commission looking into how to overhaul social care would not produce its final report until 2028.

More than a quarter of a century has passed since the publication of the first of several major inquiries into social care, which has long weighed on the NHS but was barely mentioned in the run-up to the 2024 general election.