Health secretary Sajid Javid told the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester that business as usual for the NHS “cannot be good enough”.
He said his department’s review into leadership in the NHS and social care will investigate ways of replicating the example set by leaders who excel at driving innovation and efficiency.
However, a report in The Times indicated Javid will go further and is working on new powers which would lead to the dismissal of hospital managers who fail to clear NHS backlogs.
He also told The Guardian that he did not want people using private healthcare to beat the NHS backog and that “the NHS can manage it”.
Year of renewal and reform
Javid told the conference that 2022 would be a year of “renewal and reform” and while government would continue prioritising funding for the NHS in the wake of the pandemic, “business as usual cannot be good enough”.
He revealed he wanted the NHS to embrace innovation to build a digitised system which would help drive down waiting lists.
And he promised the Health and Social Care Leadership Review, announced yesterday, would be the most far reaching since Roy Griffiths for Margaret Thatcher in 1983.
“It will shine a light on the outstanding leaders who can drive efficiency and innovation and it will see how we can replicate that leadership throughout the country,” Javid said.
“No reform is easy. We know that. Otherwise it would have been done already.
“But if we get this right, no, when we get this right, we won’t build back the way things were.
“We will build a future where our health and social care systems are integrated seamlessly together, where British life science lead the world on new treatments, where we have not only the best surgeons but the best robots performing life saving surgeries and where we don’t just treat diseases and ill health but prevent more of them from happening in the first place.”