NHS England will ‘trust local leaders’ to handle second wave, says chief

Amanda Pritchard, speaking to the NHS Providers conference on Wednesday morning, commended the actions of regional NHS leaders in their preparation for winter, who she indicated would now be more involved in big decisions about balancing services.

Ms Pritchard said: “I think one of the things that characterised the first wave response was your creativity, your innovation, your willingness to work together and to support eachother in places and systems across the regions.

“We’re going to need more of that as winter progresses and I’ve had the great pleasure of talking to colleagues from the North East and Yorkshire, the North West, Midlands and London over the past few days just as colleagues have talked a bit about what they’re practically doing now to respond to some of those increasing pressures from rising numbers of infections of covid.”

Stating a second spike presented “a different challenge” compared to April where there was a “blanket national response”, she said the NHS now had ”the ability to think much more locally, much more regionally.”

There was widespread cancellation of a large range of services during the first peak — although bosses have also stressed that emergency care and some others were still open.

Ms Pritchard, who is deputy chief and chief operating officer of NHSE and Improvement, added: “Different places will have different ways of responding to that three-sided pressure [covid, other winter pressures, restoring non-covid services]. Certainly up in the north where we have got peaks of covid… they are already implementing their plans for mutual aid, for moving work around between different organisations to try and protect elective care, and make sure they also have the capacity to support [covid patients].

“Areas in the south are yet to really experience any of that pressure yet but they are ready to do so. It’s back to the heart of collaborative working and supporting each other and, honestly, let’s trust our local leaders to do the right thing.”

Ms Pritchard also stated that providers were likely to have achieved targets to carry out increasing levels of elective activity in August and September. In July, NHS England set new activity targets for service recovery, including elective activity, which have been tied to financial incentives at system level. Providers were expected to hit 70 per cent of their 2019-20 elective activity levels by August, 80 per cent in September, and 90 per cent in October.

She said: “The NHS is remarkably on track to meet both the August and September targets for elective activity and diagnostics particularly, some of the really important ones like CT and MR are almost back to pre-covid levels. In some cases, they’re actually well ahead of even where we were before covid hit.

“It’s not a surprise but it’s nonetheless worthy of celebration and worthy of note.”

Ms Pritchard did not state whether other targets around outpatient attendances and follow-ups had been achieved.

Asked about whether asymptomatic routine covid testing for NHS staff would be introduced shortly — as was indicated in NHS guidance over the summer — she said it was a decision for the government chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, and that the NHS “stood ready” to introduce it if he recommended it.