How Monitor's strategy supports new models of care

The Future Hospital Commission has identified growing consensus behind the need for fundamental changes to models of NHS care. Harnessing the energy and imagination of clinicians will be crucial to achieving these changes. Several ideas for new models of care are familiar to innovative clinicians: the hard part so far has been making change happen. Monitor has learned about the obstacles facing NHS innovators at first hand in its ten years of regulating NHS foundation trusts. This article sets out what Monitor is doing to remove those obstacles in its role as sector regulator for health services in England. Working closely with its national partners, Monitor is trying to help health sector innovators at the front line by: taking a local health system perspective on change; aligning rules and incentives so they pull all parties in local systems in the same direction; and being more 'joined up' with its partners at the centre. Important difficulties remain, especially the questions of how to fund a transformation in care models and persuading the wider public this is worthwhile for patients. But Monitor is committed to fostering the conditions for making worthwhile change happen in the NHS. Innovative clinicians can be optimistic about making the 'hospital of the future' a reality over the next ten years.