News / Hunt heralds new era of clinical managers

The health service made ‘an historic mistake’ in the 1980s by turning to general managers rather than creating a class of manager with a clinical background, health secretary Jeremy Hunt (right) has said.

Speaking at NHS Providers’ annual conference, he launched a programme to encourage more clinicians into management. He wanted more clinician chief executives over the next decade and a new generation of clinical and non-clinical leaders, with more women and a greater proportion from black and minority ethnic groups.

While 54% of NHS hospital managers were clinicians, in Canada and the US they accounted for 74% and in Sweden for 94%, he said. Less than half of NHS chief executives were women, though they make up three-quarters of the workforce, while 2% of chief executives are from a BME background (17% of the overall workforce). 

‘Given that one of the most important roles of a chief executive is to motivate a large number of able, smart but – let’s be honest – often quite headstrong clinicians, we should today ask whether the NHS made an historic mistake in the 1980s by deliberately creating a manager class who were not clinicians, rather than making more effort to nurture and develop the management skills of those who are.’

Professional regulation will be changed to encourage more clinicians into management. Health Education England will explore whether doctors can train in clinical leadership as a specialism and the NHS graduate management training scheme will double its intake to 200 from 2018.

Jon Restell, chief executive of health managers union MiP, said the increase in non-clinical management trainees was bold. ‘Good for Hunt,’ he added. ‘It is a vote of confidence in general management, HR, finance and other disciplines in the NHS. We have always strongly supported the aim of growing the number of chief executives from clinical backgrounds and the proportion of leaders who are women and from BME backgrounds. The government must also do more to hold on to existing managers.’

NHS Providers published a survey showing that trust leaders are worried about the number, quality and skill mix of their staff. The providers’ organisation said many trust chiefs worried more about staffing than finance.