The plan to introduce league tables is a simplistic, retrograde gimmick that will demoralise NHS staff – and sideline their incredible work
Rachel Clarke is a palliative care doctor
Seriously, Wes Streeting? After 14 wretched years of Tory austerity, stealth privatisation, draconian outsourcing, the Brexit staff drain and the horror and trauma of Covid from which – as you know – staff haven’t remotely recovered, the big NHS plan is to be … naming and shaming? Complete with inflammatory language that’s designed to scapegoat staff, such as the bad managers you’ve branded the NHS’s “guilty secret”? Do you genuinely think this is constructive?
At a point when Ofsted – having contributed to the suicide of headteacher Ruth Perry – has finally rowed back from its absurdly blunt tool of one-word school inspection ratings, it beggars belief that the new health secretary thinks hospital league tables will help the NHS. Streeting insists the new public rankings are a necessary way of stamping out poor performance. He wants hospitals judged on quantifiable factors such as A&E waits, cancer care and the size of their budget deficits. Trusts will be publicly ranked from best to worst, with the CEOs of the worst offenders facing dismissal. Meanwhile, the best-performing trusts will be rewarded with extra money to buy new equipment or repair facilities, further skewing the playing field.
Rachel Clarke is a palliative care doctor and the author of Breathtaking: Inside the NHS in a Time of Pandemic
