Our Business plan 2019/20 has just been published. In it, we set out key objectives for year three of our five year strategy, Delivering fair resolution and learning from harm. We have six key priorities for the new financial year, and in supporting these we plan to focus our investment across three main areas of data, accommodation and workforce.
Resolution is one of the four main themes threaded throughout our five year strategy, and we continue to strive to keep claimants and healthcare staff out of court. Working with claimant law firms, we want to find the most appropriate methods of resolving claims without them progressing to formal litigation or trial.
Following on from our previous two annual clinical reviews into cerebral palsy and suicide-related claims, this year we have appointed emergency medicine consultant Dr Freya Levy. As we have seen a shift in the highest volume area of clinical negligence claims away from orthopaedic surgery towards emergency medicine, Dr Levy’s focus during her year-long secondment will be to produce a thematic review of emergency medicine claims – aimed at driving improvements in patient care and safety.
Another strand of our strategic priorities focuses on intervention; we have built on the first year of our maternity incentive scheme to deliver a second year incentivising safer maternity and neonatal services. We are also continuing our work to get closer to serious obstetric incidents in order to share as much learning as possible, as quickly as possible
We also want to look more closely into how we are working with NHS trusts, claimants, their families and healthcare staff to improve the way in which the NHS responds to incidents.
Our Practitioner Performance Advice service will relaunch its assessment service.. We will be implementing swifter and more focused interventions to support organisations in resolving performance concerns about individual clinicians locally.
Finally, on 1 April 2019 we launched a state-backed Clinical Negligence Scheme for General Practice (CNSGP). This is a new area for us and we look forward to using the tremendous opportunities for learning that are presented by claims from both general practice and secondary care coming under one roof.
