Reference
Glossary, metric metadata, and framework documentation
NHS Oversight Framework 2025/26
The NHS Oversight Framework (NOF) is the structured approach NHS England uses to assess the performance of NHS providers. Its purpose is to ensure public accountability for performance and provide a foundation for how NHS England works with systems and providers to support improvement.
The framework measures organisational delivery across five scored domains - access to services, effectiveness and experience of care, patient safety, people and workforce, and finance and productivity - and places providers into segments (1–4) indicating their level of performance and the degree of support they receive from NHS England.
This interactive dashboard allows you to see how NHS England has assessed each provider under the NOF 2025/26. It provides a view of how providers are performing compared to one another, including the overall segment of each provider, which indicates the breadth of challenges it faces.
Three Provider Types
- Acute providers
- Hospitals providing planned and emergency care, assessed on metrics including 18-week waits, cancer pathways, A&E performance, and hospital mortality.
- Mental health and community providers
- Community, mental health, and integrated providers, assessed on metrics including community waiting times, mental health access, crisis response, and discharge performance.
- Ambulance providers
- Emergency ambulance services assessed on metrics including Category 2 response times, conveyance rates, staff engagement, and operational efficiency.
Policy Context
Segmentation data is reviewed quarterly, and segments may be updated at any time in response to emerging performance, finance, or quality concerns. The framework operates alongside CQC inspections and other regulatory mechanisms to provide a rounded view of each organisation's position.
A key policy priority for 2025/26 is achieving financial balance across the NHS. The framework reflects this through a financial override: providers in deficit or receiving deficit support are capped at segment 3, regardless of their metric performance. This ensures financial sustainability is treated as a prerequisite for the higher-performing segments.
Using this dashboard
- Overview
- Interactive map showing all providers with segment colouring, filtering by region or ICB, and the ability to colour by individual metrics
- League table
- Sortable table of all providers ranked by segment and average score, with optional confidence intervals and quarter-on-quarter rank change
- Provider
- Detailed view of a single provider's performance including overview metrics, domain-by-domain breakdown, and a full metrics table with quarter comparison
- Reference
- Framework methodology, glossary of terms, and full metric metadata
Domains and Sub-domains
| Domain | Sub-domains |
|---|---|
| Access to services | Elective care, Cancer care, Mental health care, Urgent and emergency care |
| Effectiveness and experience of care | Effective flow and discharge, Effective out of hospital care, Patient experience |
| Finance and productivity | Finance, Productivity |
| Patient safety | Patient safety |
| People and workforce | Retention and culture |
Full details of the metrics within each sub-domain can be found in Annex A of the NHS Oversight Framework 2025/26
Contact Details
For queries regarding policy: england.nhs.oversightandassessment@nhs.net
For queries regarding the dashboard: Feedback form
NHS Oversight Framework publication
Page last reviewed: December 2025