Conservatives say they will drop internal NHS targets and focus on outcomes

The Conservative party claims that, if it forms the next British government, performance of NHS organisations and not targets will be the focus of the NHS.

The Conservative party has published a green paper promising to drop internal NHS targets in favour of focusing on health outcomes in areas such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, after care, and patient satisfaction.

Party leader David Cameron and his health spokesperson Andrew Lansely were outlining their green paper called Delivering some of the best health in Europe.

This new policy approach could save tens of thousands of lives, said Mr Cameron in a speech to an audience at the Royal College of Surgeons in London.

The planned shift in focus would lead to an “information revolution,” he said, with patients able to compare and contrast different care providers on what mattered to them—results.

“No more pointless reorganisations—just building and improving,” said Mr Cameron. “No more top down process targets—but an information revolution to measure outcomes. No more talking about patient power—but actually giving it to them, through greater accountability.

“Superficially, some of these [government] targets may look sensible. But because they push healthcare professionals to make decisions purely to ‘tick boxes’ rather than because they’re beneficial to the health of their patient, too often the result is worse patient care and a worse health outcome.”

According to the Tories, raising NHS standards to the European average would save about 38 000 lives every year and their ambition is to improve the NHS performance to match the best systems in the world, which would save around 100 000 lives.

Health minister Ann Keene said: “David Cameron will tell anyone in the NHS what he thinks they want to hear—whether it is patients, GPs or NHS staff.

“The Tories are proposing an end to longer GP opening hours; scrapping guarantees that have shortened waiting times; and cuts on a scale that would put NHS investment at risk.”

Responding to the Tories’ green paper, Niall Dickson, chief executive of think tank the King’s Fund, said: “While central targets have certainly brought problems—not least the sheer number of them and some unintended consequences—they have been a big factor in driving down unacceptable waiting lists.

“Before we drop central targets altogether we must be sure that there are appropriate safeguards to ensure standards and aspirations are in place.

“To be fair to the NHS it has already recognised that it needs to move on from an exclusive focus on centrally imposed targets towards measuring health outcomes.”

Nigel Edwards, policy director of the NHS Confederation, which represents NHS organisations said: “The NHS Confederation has been arguing for a big shift towards measures based on patient satisfaction and quality of outcomes for some time and this document contains a number of very sensible policies to take the NHS forward.”