Plans to transform the NHS in England over the next decade will not succeed without substantial investment in management to professionalise and develop its role, a report from a leading healthcare think tank has warned.1
The King’s Fund said “high-calibre, well-trained management” alongside clinical leadership was essential to delivering the government’s much heralded 10 Year Health Plan.2 The report argues that it is time to embed a strong national framework for NHS managers that will include a code of practice, standards and competencies, and a national development curriculum.
It points out that Ara Darzi’s rapid investigation into the state of the NHS last year warned that management capability in the NHS was behind where it had been in 2011, leaving the system ill equipped to deliver and transform.3
Workforce numbers
The report says that too many managers with the right skills and capabilities had been lost from the NHS in recent years, largely because of former health secretary Andrew Lansley’s 2012 reorganisation.4
The role of clinicians in management …
