NHS Leadership and Management Summit: Lansley speech

NHS Leadership and Management Summit: Lansley speech; - I said at the beginning that if you want to achieve success in an organisation you first have to put the right people in charge. But that’s not all. You then need to be clear about what they are trying to achieve and show them how you will hold them to account for that. So let me ask you a simple question. What’s the NHS for? We all know when we see it: supporting childbirth; promoting good health; treating illness and injury and promoting recovery; care for those with chronic illness; care when dying. But if this is what the NHS is for, why have we never measured in a systematic way how well it’s achieving these aims? Of course, these things are not always easy. But they are worth the effort. What is the gain if you treat people in a shorter period of time if the quality of the care and the quality of the outcomes were to be poor? Too often we measure the success of the Health Service by the number of units it processes, not by how well it improves people’s lives. So from now on, I want all parts of the NHS to be judged on the clinical outcomes they achieve. We published the Outcomes Framework in December to help all clinicians to pull in the same direction. • Reducing avoidable mortality; • enhancing recovery after treatment; • improving the quality of life for people with chronic conditions; • maximising safety and cutting the number of infections; • and continually improving patients’ experience of their own healthcare. To flesh out the detail, NICE is developing a library of condition specific Quality Standards. These will mean that, over time, every clinician – and every patient – will be able to see just what excellent care really means and judge whether they are receiving it. These aren’t targets by another name. They state what should be achieved, not how clinicians should achieve them. As General Patton once said, “Don't tell people how to do th...