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NHS England ‘hasn’t got long’ to develop ‘operating model’ for system working


NHS England and local leaders must urgently develop a coherent ‘operating model’ for the era of integrated care systems (ICS) or see the reforms fail, leading trust chief executives have told HSJ.

Despite ICSs formally launching on 1 July, the chiefs said there was still no clarity about how the service would be supported and held to account as the Health and Care Act reforms are rolled out and the stuttering Covid recovery continues.

The CEOs were speaking at a roundtable to mark the publication of HSJ's annual ranking of the NHS’s “top 50 trust chief executives”.

NHSE has been working on a new operating model since last year. It has confirmed it plans to keep its seven separate regional teams, and has recently indicated national programmes will be curbed as part of reductions to central staffing. 

Caroline Clarke, the chief executive of north London’s Royal Free group of trusts, said: “What’s unclear to me is, what the operating model is for [the] whole NHS? What is NHSE going to do… what’s expected of the regions and the ICSs… is the performance management line [for providers] going to go all the way through the ICS?”

Ms Clarke said she recognised “some kind of regional infrastructure” was needed and that the existing set-up made sense in widely recognised areas such as London and other “urban” conurbations. But she added: “Are [regions] just going to be aggregating features of the NHS, or are they actually going to have a kind of intent to them?”

Ms Clarke said she was “hung up” on getting an effective operating model because, without it, there was an increased chance NHSE staff would “get in the way and stop us making decisions”.

Read full story (paywalled)

Source: HSJ, 25 July 2022

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