Scarborough Hospital Trust Ranks Poorly in New League Table But Ambulance Service Perfoms Strongly

New NHS League Tables Reveal Varied Performance Across Trusts with Yorkshire Ambulance Service Among Top Performers

A groundbreaking system of NHS league tables has been launched across England, with the aim of elevating standards, addressing inconsistencies in care, and ensuring that patients receive superior service and greater value from significant public investment.

The Department of Health and Social Care unveiled the first set of tables, which are set to quarterly rank every trust against explicit, uniform standards spanning urgent and emergency care, elective operations, and mental health services.

This initiative represents a pivotal moment in government reform, ushering in an era of heightened transparency and accountability within the NHS. Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting underscored the necessity of candour regarding the state of the NHS for its improvement, stating,

"Patients and taxpayers have to know how their local NHS services are doing compared to the rest of the country".

He further elaborated that these league tables would

"identify where urgent support is needed and allow high-performing areas to share best practices with others, taking the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS".

Under the new framework, trusts are evaluated against metrics from the National Oversight Framework (NOF) and categorised into one of four performance segments. Segment 1 denotes the highest-performing areas, while Segment 4 indicates the most challenged. To facilitate equitable comparisons, distinct league tables have been published for acute, non-acute, and ambulance trusts.

Performance of Yorkshire Trusts in Detail:

For acute hospital trusts serving the Yorkshire Coast region, the initial results place two key providers in the fourth, most challenged, segment:

• York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has been categorised in Segment 4, with an aggregated metric ranking (AMR) score of 2.84, placing it at 118th out of the 134 acute trusts listed in the league table.
• Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust also finds itself in Segment 4, achieving an AMR score of 2.91, and ranking 123rd among acute trusts.

In contrast, the Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust has demonstrated strong performance within its category, securing a position in the top-tier Segment 1. It recorded an AMR score of 1.86, earning it the 3rd rank out of 10 ambulance trusts evaluated nationwide.

Sir Jim Mackey, Chief Executive of NHS England, acknowledged the dedication of NHS staff while highlighting that

"we still have far too much unwarranted local variation in performance". 

"Letting patients and the public access more data will help to drive improvement even faster by supporting them to identify where they should demand even better from their NHS and by putting more power in their hands to make informed decisions on their choice of provider".

Patient feedback is also set to play a pivotal role in trust rankings, empowering individuals with a stronger voice in shaping their care.

Top-performing trusts will be granted greater autonomy and investment, including the discretion to reinvest surplus budgets into frontline enhancements. From next year, a new cohort of foundation trusts will emerge, offering the best-performing trusts increased freedom to tailor services to local needs.

Conversely, trusts facing significant challenges will receive enhanced support, with senior leaders held accountable through performance-linked pay. The government intends to offer higher remuneration to the most effective NHS leaders to undertake the most demanding roles and turnaround struggling services. In instances of persistent failure, senior managers could face pay reductions.

The assessment of organisational performance in the NHS is intricate, and the league tables serve as a guide rather than a definitive pronouncement of one trust being inherently "better" than another. The NOF measures relative, not absolute, performance, meaning that 25% of trusts will consistently occupy each segment, irrespective of overall improvements or deteriorations. Differences in average performance between trusts ranked closely are often marginal and not statistically significant.

The government says these reforms are integral to its "Plan for Change", which aims to ensure that NHS investment translates into "tangible outcomes, greater efficiency, and genuine value for patients".

The government says the league tables fulfil a key pledge within its 10 Year Health Plan to enhance transparency, reward excellence, and address poor performance across the NHS.

By summer 2026, the tables are scheduled for expansion to encompass Integrated Care Boards and broader facets of NHS performance. The full interactive dashboard and accessible league tables are published by NHS England at https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/nhs-oversight-framework-nhs-trust-performance-league-tables-process-and-results/