NHS told to scrap key targets and cut costs

LONDON (Reuters) - Health Secretary Andrew Lansley scrapped two key National Health Service waiting time targets on Monday and demanded that management costs be slashed by almost half.

Lansley said he was cutting patients' right to see a family doctor within 48 hours as well as dropping the 18-week waiting time target for referral to hospital treatment, both flagship elements of the ousted Labour government's health policy.

"I want to free the NHS from bureaucracy and targets that have no clinical justification and move to an NHS which measures its performance on patient outcomes," said Lansley.

Lansley also told NHS managers to speed up cuts in their costs to save 850 million pounds a year by 2014, a 46 percent reduction on current expenditure.

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, which replaced Labour following the May election, has pledged to ring-fence health spending from public expenditure cuts needed to tackle a record budget deficit.

But Lansley has said savings still needed to be made to cope with an expected rise in demand on NHS services as the population ages and new treatments emerge.

Lansley is seeking to change the focus of the NHS from meeting short-term targets favoured by Labour to concentrating on the outcome of care given to patients.

He has already announced plans to cut another totemic Labour health target -- the maximum 4-hour wait in hospital accident and emergency (A&E) units.

Monday, the NHS said it would relax the requirement for hospitals to meet the A&E target from 98 percent compliance to 95 percent, ahead of wider changes next year.

Patients' representatives said they were worried the waiting time targets were being abolished before ways of monitoring treatment outcomes were in place.

"This is the right direction and the right idea, but we're very concerned about how they are approaching making these changes," said Patients Association Director Katherine Murphy.

"We have always supported reviewing the targets ... but we have never supported abolishing the targets and not putting in place something to replace them."

NHS Chief Executive David Nicholson said the change in focus should not mean long waiting times were now acceptable.

"Standards and quality are also expected to be maintained where existing targets are removed or adjusted pending the development of more outcome-focussed measures," Nicholson said in NHS guidelines outlining the changes.

"Patients would not expect a return to long waiting times for operations."

(Editing by Steve Addison)