• Sir Andrew Morris says CEOs would be dismissed over 12-hour waits a decade ago
  • NHSE vice chair says “do not want to be in that kind of territory” but “really important” to tackle
  • Last month saw 58 per cent more of these long waits compared to previous year

We do not want to return to previous territory of sacking chief executives for long A&E waits.

The warning was made by NHS England’s deputy chair Sir Andrew Morris at the organisation’s board meeting yesterday.

Sir Andrew said that while he was concerned by the growth in 12-hour accident and emergency waits, sacking trust chief executives was not the appropriate response.

He said: “If you go back a decade, chief executives used to get dismissed on the basis of 12-hour performance…Clearly we don’t want to be in that kind of territory [again]”. Nevertheless, he acknowledged that reducing very long A&E waits would be the service’s “next big challenge” in the run-up to next winter.

HSJ understands that government ministers and advisers are increasingly keen that trust CEOs be held to account for poor emergency care performance. 

Sir Andrew’s comments appear to refer to the 2017 dismissal of East Kent’s Matthew Kershaw, and North Middlesex’s Elizabeth McManus over their trusts’ A&E record on the orders of then health and social care secretary Jeremy Hunt. 

andrew morris

Source: NHS England

Sir Andrew Morris

Thje NHSE board heard yesterday how 12-hour waits for the admission, transfer or discharge of A&E patients were 58 per cent higher last month compared to April 2023. 

Meanwhile four-hour waits were only 0.2 percentage points higher. They had been subject to a big push late year involving capital incentives and personal commitments from trust directors.

NHSE chief operating officer Emily Lawson said 12-hour waits would be a priority in 2024-25. 

In a letter sent yesterday,  NHSE urgent and emergency care director Sarah-Jane Marsh said a further £150m cash incentive would be available this year for improvements to urgent and emergency care. The funding will be specifically used to address 12-hour – as well as four-hour – waits and category two calls to ambulance services for the first time.

Sir Andrew added that tackling long A&E waits would mean winning “hearts and minds” within systems, as it “cannot just be down to acute providers” to discharge patients and, therefore, free up capacity to admit emergency admissions.

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Source

NHS England board meeting

Source Date

16th May 2023

Topics