News / New rating to assess finance and quality

Assessments of quality and finance will be equal parts of a single performance assessment to be established in response to the Francis report.

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt said the provider assessment would place as much emphasis on addressing care failures as on financial failure. Francis had recommended Monitor’s functions be transferred to the Care Quality Commission (CQC), but the government response, Patients first and foremost, said there was a strong case for keeping them separate. Monitor will retain its duty to assess foundation trust finances and, with the NHS Trust Development Authority, will give the CQC financial information. This will help produce a single rating, led by the CQC’s new chief inspector of hospitals.

Mr Hunt said trusts that did not move quickly to rectify breaches could be put into special administration and their boards suspended. He will also consult on barring top managers guilty of gross misconduct from holding another NHS job. And he said those seeking NHS funding for nursing degrees must first spend up to a year as healthcare assistants.

The HFMA said: ‘Alongside Mr Hunt’s intentions to make best practice common practice, we believe services have to be redesigned to provide cost-effective, right-first-time treatment at the most appropriate time, in the most appropriate settings.’

NHS Confederation chief executive Mike Farrar said culture change would not occur overnight. ‘We must keep a relentless focus on the long-term goal: creating an NHS that is safer, more compassionate and fully accountable to those it serves,’ he said.