NHS bosses 'worried over targets'

By 2008 patients should only wait 18 weeks for hospital treatment

Nearly two thirds of NHS bosses do not believe all the government's health targets can be hit, a survey suggests.

Most targets have been met to date, but the NHS Confederation found widespread doubts about how realistic the goals for the next three years were.

Its poll of 80 chief executives found many were also worried about what would happen after 2008, when the record NHS budget increases come to an end.

The Department of Health acknowledged the targets were challenging.

Some 62% of the chief executives quizzed said they did not believe all the forthcoming targets - including the government's flagship goal for all hospital patients to be seen within 18 weeks by 2008 - can be met.

NHS chief executives are worried that the pace of change cannot continue without further investment Gill Morgan NHS Confederation

NHS bosses also called on the government's choice policy, to be introduced later this year, to offer different treatment options as well as a choice of healthcare providers.

Patients will be able to choose from five under the plan.

Other results of the survey showed that 42% of NHS chief executives believed obesity was the most significant threat to long-term public health in the UK, ahead of smoking, 33%.

It also found that 67% agreed that surgical patients were now more afraid of catching the MRSA superbug than the operation itself.

NHS Confederation chief executive Gill Morgan said part of the problem was a legacy of the historic underfunding of the health service.

"The government is right to be ambitious, and to demand excellence. But NHS chief executives are worried that the pace of change cannot continue without further investment.

Funding

"The task for the coming year is to deliver more non-hospital care and we need to ensure there is sufficient funding for this."

She is also expected to tell delegates at the first day of the conference that doctors and nurses are not fully engaged in the government's reform agenda, putting many of the planned improvements at risk.

But Institute for Public Policy Research health researcher Joe Farrington-Douglas said it was in chief executives' interest to bargain for more, but warned ministers to address their concerns.

"At the end of the day politicians have set the targets and it will be they who are held accountable."

A Department of Health spokesman said targets had helped transform the NHS and the government was committed to making sure future ones were hit.

"We know there is more to do - we are only half-way through a 10-year programme of reform.

"What we have to do now is to embed these reforms and improve quality as well as quantity, to ensure that hospitals which do not provide the quality and speed that patients want now, start transforming their services."