The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Andrew Lansley)
The White Paper “Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS” (Cm 7881) outlined a vision of an NHS that achieves health outcomes that are among the best in the world. It explained that an NHS outcomes framework would be developed to provide national level accountability for the outcomes that the NHS delivers.
I have today published “The NHS Outcomes Framework 2012-13”. This refreshes the first NHS outcomes framework published for England in December 2010 and includes updated definitions for some of the indicators in the framework.
The framework has three main purposes, which remain the same in this updated version:
to provide a national level overview of how the NHS is performing against certain outcome measures;
to act as a mechanism for the Secretary of State to hold the NHS Commissioning Board to account for delivering improvements in outcomes, from April 2013; and
to act as a catalyst for driving improvement and a focus on outcomes throughout the NHS.
A copy of “The NHS Outcomes Framework 2012-13” has been placed in the Library. Copies are available to hon. Members from the Vote Office and to noble Lords from the Printed Paper Office.