Published: 06 September 2022
CQC’s Chief Executive, Ian Trenholm said:
“We accept the findings of the Tribunal and recognise that the process of disengaging Mr Kumar from his role as a Specialist Advisor was handled poorly, without proper explanation. We have apologised to Mr Kumar for this. We are grateful for the concerns he raised, which were used in our ongoing regulation of the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay Trust. We inspected the trust, including orthopaedics, in November and December 2018, after he raised these concerns. We also inspected maternity services provided by this trust as part of a focused inspection in December 2019, as a direct result of separate information of concern, and have inspected the trust on a further two occasions since.
“The concerns staff and the public share with us about health and care services are critical to our work. This information helps us form a picture of how well a service is caring for people and whether we need to take action to ensure improvements are made. We are grateful to those staff that have contacted us to share concerns - it takes courage to speak out and it’s vital that people feel able to do so to prevent poor care and help support providers to make improvements. As at April 2022, of inspections triggered by new information, 47% were triggered by concerns shared by people who use and work in services and the public.
“Specialist Advisors play a vital role in our inspections and we want to ensure when they contribute their expertise and time to help improve people’s care, they are properly supported to do so. Since 2019, we have strengthened our processes around the use of specialist advisors and, in line with the findings of the tribunal, will be further improving procedures for disengagement, including adding a right of appeal process.”