UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting plans to publish a league table of the best and worst performing NHS hospitals in the country and sack failing health bosses.

This will be announced at the NHS Providers conference in Liverpool while detailing criteria such as waiting times for accident and emergency (A&E), surgery, financial health, and leadership quality.

Persistently failing managers may face dismissal, with turnaround teams sent to underperforming trusts.

Trusts demonstrating high performance will receive additional funding for equipment and infrastructure improvements.

The league table is slated for release by the beginning of April 2025.

However, the initiative has sparked controversy among healthcare professionals, with critics arguing that it could lead to unnecessary shaming without addressing deeper systemic issues.

Healthcare services provider Healthwatch England chief executive Louise Ansari said: “Currently, living in an area with either an outstanding or poorly performing NHS trust feels like a postcode lottery.

“Establishing a better system that encourages NHS managers to focus on delivering the best care as efficiently as possible, and leads to quicker changes at struggling trusts, would be good news for everyone.”

NHS Confederation Hospitals Group chief executive Matthew Taylor said: “The prospect of more ‘league tables’ will concern health leaders, as these can strip out important underlying information.

“NHS staff are doing their very best for patients under very challenging circumstances and we do not want them feeling like they are being named and shamed. League tables in themselves do not lead to improvement.”

Taylor further noted that struggling trusts often face challenges such as staffing shortages and high demand for care, which are not necessarily reflected in league table rankings.

Society for Acute Medicine president Nick Murch said: “Penalising and shaming struggling hospitals … is simply likely to create division, damage patient confidence and further demoralise staff who are striving to provide good care in an already poor environment.”

Similarly, Royal College of Nursing England executive director Patricia Marquis cautioned against scapegoating leaders for broader issues of underinvestment and systemic failures.

She suggested that the league table approach could erode public trust without addressing the root causes of performance issues.