NHS 2010-2015: from good to great - key points

The document contains a mixture of specific commitments and aspirations. The figures in brackets refer to the paragraph number in the document.

Patients and the public

• Dedicated ‘personalised one-to-one support by a health professional’ for people with cancer or long-term conditions. A commitment to consider and cost a patient entitlement in this area and publish the results in early 2010. (2.76)
• More choice for patients – abolishing GP practice boundaries (2.62), improving access to a GP in the evenings and weekends, and more services at home or in the community.
• New legal rights to treatment for certain conditions within maximum waiting times, to an NHS health check for everyone aged between 40 and 74 and to the right to die at home. (2.79)

NHS organisations

• Linking ‘a significant proportion’ of provider income to patient experience and satisfaction from next year, rising to up to 10 per cent of trusts’ income ‘over time’. (2.59)
• Incentivising providers to maximise efficiency by limiting or freezing the tariff for each procedure carried out in hospitals, with a ‘maximum uplift of 0 per cent’ for the next four years. (4.5)
• Using the tariff system to incentivise the shift of care out of hospital settings by ‘limiting the payments providers receive when activity exceeds planned levels’ (4.7)
• Encouraging high-performing NHS foundation trusts to expand their services, for example, foundation trusts based in one area could provide both acute and community services in other areas. (4.50)

Staff

• Working with NHS Employers and trade unions ‘to explore the pros and cons of offering frontline staff an employment guarantee locally or regionally in return for flexibility, mobility and sustained pay restraint’. (3.30)
• ‘Significantly’ reducing management costs in PCTs and strategic health authorities (SHAs) by 30 per cent over the next four years. (4.35)