How could regulation of NHS managers work—and will it happen?
Samir Jeraj explores the proposals and considers the potential pitfalls A government consultation on regulating managers in the NHS in England closed in February.1 This was the latest in a series of efforts over several years to grapple with the question of how to raise standards of management in the NHS while ensuring these non-clinical roles remain attractive to talented people. There is no comprehensive unified system for regulating NHS managers. Some are covered by professional bodies that regulate their members and hold them to a set of standards, but a manager who is a clinician is part of a different professional framework than one who is an accountant or a solicitor. Robert Francis’s inquiry into serious failings at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust recommended that a “fit and proper person test” be introduced at director level,2 which happened in 2013. In 2019, after Tom Kark’s review of this test,3 it was extended to board level leaders across all integrated care systems
