More ‘crack teams’ of doctors are to be sent to additional providers this year to help boost productivity and cut waiting times, the health secretary Wes Streeting has announced.
It comes as the 20 areas that have already received this support have seen waiting times reduce twice as fast as those without, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has claimed.
Between October 2024 and January 2025, the 20 trusts that had these teams reduced their waiting lists from 1.42 million to 1.38 million, a drop of 37,000, or 2.6%.
Those without the teams saw waiting lists fall by around 65,000 from 5.73 million to 5.67 million, a drop of 1.1%.
The plans for the ‘crack teams’ were initially announced in September by Mr Streeting at the Labour party conference. He said these ‘top clinicians’ would be sent to hospitals to get them running like a ‘Formula 1 pit stop’.
He reiterated this goal in October alongside an announcement of £1.5bn in capital funding to increase elective appointments, ahead of the autumn budget.
The support was given to 20 trusts and their integrated care systems to improve and streamline pathways for patients and ‘spread good practice’ in areas with high levels of economic inactivity.
Called Further Faster 20 (FF20), the programme aimed to reduce waiting times and enable people to return to work through identifying areas that could improve within the patient pathway, including the interface between primary and secondary care in services such as community musculoskeletal services, reducing missed appointments and using elective surgical hubs to increase capacity.
Areas that have had this support include the Northern Care Alliance and Manchester Foundation Trust, which set up clinics to see up to 100 patients per day to assess, diagnose and place them on a treatment pathway. These clinics also had access to employment advisors who could support patients with barriers to returning to work.
Warrington and Halton also received a team to run clinics for gynaecology on the weekends, and East Lancs Hospital Trust streamlined their diagnostic pathways and increased capacity for echocardiography and reduced waiting lists from 2,700 patients to 700.
Health secretary Wes Streeting said: ‘By sending top doctors to provide targeted support to hospitals in the areas of highest economic inactivity, we are getting sick Brits back to health and back to work.
‘I am determined to transform health and social care so it works better for patients – but also because I know that transformation can help drag our economy out of the sluggish productivity and poor growth of recent years.
‘We have to get more out of the NHS for what we put in. By taking the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS, reforming the way surgeries are running, we are cutting waiting lists twice as fast at no extra cost to the taxpayer.’
However, health leaders have flagged that this programme will take managerial capacity, which is set to be cut in both NHS England and ICBs following last week’s announcement that ICBs will need to cut their workforce by 12,500.
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: ‘NHS leaders are committed to driving down waiting lists and appreciate the targeted support from the government to learn from the best. The NHS also appreciates the link between a healthy society supported by a strong NHS and a well-functioning economy.
‘The success of the scheme so far in these services points to the importance of strong management and administration in the NHS to deliver for patients and staff, which the government should bear in mind when ever deeper cuts in managerial capacity are being demanded.’
He added: ‘As the latest data shows while waiting lists have come down for the last six months, it is still over 7.4m. It will take time to clear the backlog completely especially with bed occupancy levels still high.
‘Our members will look forward to the roll out of teams more widely while exploring the implications for other parts of the system with long waiting lists.’
Interim chief executive of NHS Providers, Saffron Cordery added: ‘With calls this week to find further stringent savings, trust leaders are increasingly warning that hard won progress to transform services, reduce waiting lists, and see patients as quickly as possible could be jeopardised. The need to scale back or stop services and reducing staff is a bleak, but increasingly likely, prospect.
‘With the 10-year health plan and comprehensive spending review coming up, this is a critical opportunity to recognise the clear economic and wider benefits that can be derived from investing in those vital health services that get to the root cause of spiralling demand.’
Last week, the Government announced that NHS England would be abolished, with functions brought back into the DHSC.
