Daily Insight: Not the new normal

Corridor care “must not be the norm”, NHS England has warned trusts after it admitted failings exposed by an undercover documentary at a troubled hospital were “not acceptable”.

NHSE’s chief nursing officer, chief operating officer, national medical director, and national urgent and emergency care director have written a letter to trust leaders after a Dispatches documentary aired on Monday highlighted instances of poor care at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.

The programme’s undercover reporter captured many examples of patients being treated in corridors, including a woman left in agony without pain relief and a man forced to urinate in a bottle in front of 30 other people.

The letter, seen by HSJ, said corridor care or care delivered outside a normal cubicle environment “must not be considered the norm”.

It added: “It should only be in periods of escalation and with board-level oversight at trust and system level… where it is deemed a necessity… it must be provided in the safest and most effective manner possible, for the shortest period of time… with patient dignity and respect being maintained throughout.”

It also said that where any trust is challenged they can contact the national team and acknowledged staff are working “extremely hard”.

Procurement partnership propriety probed

Procurement frameworks are indispensable tools for NHS trusts to buy products and services. Their resource-constrained procurement teams rely on these tools — rosters of pre-scrutinised suppliers — to fulfil their needs quickly and efficiently.

This demand has meant the number of frameworks has proliferated, so much so that NHSE’s chief commercial officer is trying to constrain the expansion of these tools.This can be very lucrative for the organisations that set them up and run them, which levy fees from suppliers that win business through the framework.

This usually amounts to around 1 per cent although it can go higher.

This has attracted private firms that specialise in producing them, which must partner with public sector authorities to act as host for the framework and the tendering process to set it up. They split the proceeds from the supplier levy.

There are several trusts and framework providers doing this. But this month one such agreement has been taken to court. One procurement services provider company is suing Alder Hey Children’s Foundation Trust for, it claims, not following procurement rules when it formed a partnership with another procurement services provider.