NHS Confederation calls for action to curb bureaucracy

The NHS Confederation has urged the Department of Health and arms length bodies to do more tackle the excessive bureaucracy that is plaguing NHS organisations at present.

A report has been published by the organisation which states that insufficient progress has been made to reduce red tape across the NHS over the last three years, due to a lack of cooperation between the various agencies requiring information from NHS bodies.

This is being compounded by the fact that healthcare providers have no means of making a formal challenging when asked to provide duplicate information, a matter that is taking up staff resources and time that could be better spent on frontline services.

As such, the NHS Confederation is calling for information collection to be kept to a minimum in order to improve efficiency.

NHS Confederation chief executive Mike Farrar says information must be provided in a way that "allows patients to have a clear picture of the standards of care, without spending a disproportionate amount of time providing the same information to numerous organisations in different ways".

The government has already committed to tackling bureaucracy in the NHS through its Red Tape Challenge, which pledged last month to examine 500 regulations in this sector to see where efficiency gains could be made.