The NHS Plan, published in July 2000, set out the Government's future vision for the health service. The Audit Commission has selected key targets from the Plan, and our appointed auditors have assessed every NHS trust in England not just on their current performance, but on their capacity to improve. Our purpose has been to assist local NHS bodies to plan improvements where necessary, rather than wait for information to appear about the previous year's performance when it is already too late to do anything about delivering services for today's patients. 'League tables' of past performance - such as the Department of Health (DH) performance indicators, or tables published by Dr Foster, can provide patients with information about local services. By contrast the forward-looking assessments in this report will be of most use to the NHS bodies themselves, the staff within them who are trying to improve the services they provide continually, and those who support their efforts.
The findings of the report will thus be of interest to:
- The Government and the DH: The findings will help them gauge whether their ambitious plans to improve health services are likely to succeed, identifying where and why their aims are at risk.
- Patients' advocates: The findings will be of interest to the public because they are about the detailed targets set for the service - it is achievement of this type of target that should mean the delivery of a good health service.
- Primary care trusts (PCTs): The information in the report could help PCTs identify where to target their commissioning effort and resources.
- Service providers (acute, ambulance, mental health, PCTs a nd specialist trusts): The report assesses how trusts are doing across a range of key targets that they have been set and provides an independent forewarning of their capacity to achieve them in the future. It identifies factors associated with successful trusts from which others can learn.
- Strategic health authorities (SHAs): The information can help SHAs carry out their duties to monitor and manage performance across their areas, indicating where they will need to provide support.