NHS staff ‘do not believe care quality is prioritised enough’

More needs to be done to ensure that NHS leadership adopts a patient-centric focus, according to a new survey from The King's Fund.

Results from the poll showed that 73 percent of NHS professionals do not think that quality of care is given enough priority within the health service, while 40 per cent deemed the standard of NHS leadership as a whole to be poor or very poor.

Two-fifths of those surveyed identified time and/or resources as the biggest barrier to increasing quality of care, with organisational culture was the second most common answer.

According to the report, significant cultural changes need to take place within the NHS if the threat of a repeat of the safety failings recently seen at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust is to be averted.

Nicola Hartley, director of leadership development at The King's Fund, said: "These kinds of changes do not occur by good intention; they require time and commitment from ward to board to achieve sustainable change."

Last month, a study from the thinktank suggested that recent health spending reforms have risked creating complexity for local service commissioners, thus further undermining efforts to improve care standards.