Senior personnel meet to debate key issues

Prior to the start of the second day of April’s Hospital Innovations 2016 show at Olympia, London, and immediately before Lord Carter gave an address at the event updating conference delegates on progress with he and his team’s review of the ‘productivity and efficiency’ of English NHS acute hospitals, IHEEM held an ‘invitation only’ Chief Executives’ Breakfast Briefing, at which senior personnel from both the NHS and private sector discussed some of their key concerns against today’s difficult economic backdrop for the sector. HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports.

Opening the discussions, the chair of the proceedings, IHEEM CEO, Julian Amey, explained that the aim of the briefing was to enable participants to ‘assemble some thoughts about what the whole productivity and efficacy agenda was really about’ before Lord Carter spoke. He said: “We have all read Lord Carter’s ‘final’ report, and yesterday’s conference sessions went into some detail about the findings and recommendations, with interesting evidence from some Trusts on how they are taking forward the Productivity and Efficiency programme.” 

Julian Amey said that while he had heard one of the day’s previous day’s speakers say that the Carter Report was ‘just another report’, he personally felt it would have traction ‘because it’s been widely discussed and widely presented, and the Department of Health and the Secretary of State are firmly behind it’. He added: “It also has some really good metrics, and there is a good reason to think that this report will work.”