Daily Insight: Payback time

There are some public relations pitfalls which are visible a mile off. One of them is likely to be giving an already highly paid chief executive a bonus for work during covid when frontline staff don’t get one.

As several HSJ readers have pointed out, someone in the NHS in Hampshire should have stopped and asked whether paying clinical commissioning group chief executive Maggie MacIsaac a bonus (the amount of which is unclear) was really a good idea. The bonus was for her “response [to] and management” of the pandemic and was revealed in the renumeration section of the CCG’s 2021-22 annual report

Ms MacIsaac and the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Integrated Care Board – which she now leads – jointly made the decision to repay the bonus but only after HSJ made enquiries about the payment.

It’s likely that the bonus would only have been a small amount in the context of her £200,000 salary but being paid it when NHS staff – many of whom would have worked on covid wards and taken some personal risk – had been refused the “covid bonuses” paid in other parts of the UK appears hard to justify.

From struggling to unmanageable

One of the NHS’s biggest hospital trusts that has been struggling with its cancer waiting times has now declared them to be at an “unmanageable size”.

Mid and South Essex Foundation Trust noted the stark figures in its latest board papers, adding that while referral rates had plateaued from March 2021, treatment rates had not increased in line with the growth of its patient tracking list (PTL).

“This points to a noisy PTL, where the hospital is extremely busy managing patients who do not have cancer,” the report continued.

It highlighted particular concerns around a “serious” demand and capacity problem in its dermatology department which contributed to almost half of its 62-day backlog – with 445 dermatology patients waiting more than 62 days for treatment.

“The 62-day [referral to treatment backlog as of 3 July] has increased for the second consecutive week to 1,055,” it declared, adding: “The PTL is getting bigger and has reached an unmanageable size.”

HSJ previously reported the trust had appointed a specialist cancer turnaround director from the national team after its performance plummeted – but refused to identify who it was, and continues to do so.

In another attempt to bring its performance back up, MSE FT also held a “cancer summit” in June, in which a plan to implement “best practice pathways and transformation” in five key tumour sites was expected to be developed.

Meanwhile, in a statement, the trust said it was currently working on a “phased recovery plan” to help improve its trajectory. Whether it works in the way the trusts expects remains to be seen.