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Hospitals in England that deliver the fastest improvements in waiting times for care will be rewarded with a multi-million pound share of additional investment in buildings and equipment, Wes Streeting will announce on Monday.
The move by the Health Secretary is intended to motivate NHS leaders to achieve a target of 92 per cent of patients waiting no more than 18 weeks to start non-urgent treatment after referral to a consultant.
Last month, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer gave new urgency to the standard, first set by Tony Blair two decades ago, when he described it as one of six “milestones” of his administration and pledged to meet it by the end of this year. The current parliament.
But this scale has not been achieved for nearly 10 years, as austerity, the pandemic and rising demand from an aging and growing population have increased pressure on health services.
Before Monday's announcement, Department of Health officials told the Financial Times that additional 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 greatest improvements in meeting the 18-week requirement. Referral to standard treatment.
Performance will be measured by the percentage of patients seen within that time frame, they said.
The lure of additional capital funding will resonate in a service that has long lagged behind similar countries in the amounts invested in infrastructure.
In a government-commissioned report last year, Lord Ara Darzi, a surgeon and former health secretary, identified A A capital deficit of up to £37 billion.
Streeting said some hospital trusts were already leading the way, performing surgeries “in innovative and more productive ways”. “This government will support them with new capital investments and allow them to overcome the backlog.”
He added that organizations that treated a greater number of patients should receive higher wages for their work and “good performance should be rewarded to incentivize great performance – that is how we will reduce waiting times.”
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 campaign is being supported by £25.6bn announced for the NHS in the October Budget. Ministers say the extra money will help fund an additional two million appointments within a year, but health leaders have warned against this “Confusion” about prioritization Achieve performance goals or increase winter acceptance rates.
At the end of October, the latest available figures indicate that patients were waiting for 7.54 million procedures and appointments. About 40 percent of people were waiting longer than 18 weeks.
The pressures on the NHS were underscored by data released on Friday which showed a A sharp rise in influenza cases During the holiday period. More than 5,000 patients were hospitalized with the virus last weekend, nearly 3.5 times higher than the same week in 2023.
Ministers are also facing a backlash from campaigners and opposition parties after Streeting said on Friday that a new commission examining how to reform social care would not deliver its final report until 2028.
It has been more than a quarter of a century since the launch of the first of several major inquiries into social care, which greatly impacted the NHS but were barely mentioned during the 2024 general election.
