John Howell – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by John Howell on 2015-02-11.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many NHS doctors are excluded from practice under the Maintaining High Professional Standards framework.

Dr Daniel Poulter

This information is not collected centrally.

Under Directions to the NHS Litigation Authority, the National Clinical Assessment Service function has a responsibility to monitor and report on national suspensions and exclusions under the Maintaining High Professional Standards framework.

The National Clinical Assessment Service has provided the following information. In their most recent published report ‘Use of exclusion and suspension from work in England’ of June 2014, which refers to financial year to 31 March 2014 they recorded 148 exclusions for doctors with a mean duration of 41 weeks based on 75 cases.

The information provided does not provide a breakdown of clinical and non-clinical behaviour.

The classification used is that the primary recorded reasons for exclusion are conduct (119 cases (80%)) and clinical (29 cases (20%)).