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<p>Providers of National Health Service-funded healthcare services are expected to
meet a range of waiting time standards and other operational standards and quality
requirements, in order to deliver the rights and pledges in the NHS Constitution and
to achieve other national priorities. These requirements are set out in the NHS Standard
Contract, which is used by clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) for all contracts
with hospital providers of NHS healthcare services. The Contract sets out the consequences
of breaches of the waiting time standards and other requirements. In many cases, this
consequence is in the form of a financial sanction.</p><p> </p><p>However, since April
2016, the operation of certain contractual sanctions for reduced performance against
waiting time standards, including four hour and 12 hour waits in accident and emergency
(A&E) and the Referral to Treatment 18 week incomplete pathways standard has been
suspended where a provider is receiving funding from the national Sustainability and
Transformation Fund (STF) and meets certain other specified conditions. The overall
effect is that, in 2017/18, the Contract sanctions for A&E performance are not
being applied to the majority of NHS hospitals – only to a very small minority which
refused the offer of funding from the STF and the associated conditions.</p><p> </p><p>Since
2015/16, NHS Improvement has published a high level summary of this information in
their Quarterly reports, the latest of which is for Quarter 3 of 2017/18 and is available
at the following link:</p><p> </p><p><a href="https://improvement.nhs.uk/resources/quarterly-performance-nhs-provider-sector-quarter-3-201718/"
target="_blank">https://improvement.nhs.uk/resources/quarterly-performance-nhs-provider-sector-quarter-3-201718/</a></p>
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