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The effectiveness of the team of consultants brought in to improve Health in the wake of damning reports – at a rate of £200,000-per-quarter – is to be examined in an official review.
The Public Accounts Committee – a group of politicians responsible for scrutinising the spending of public money – will be probing governance arrangements in Health and Social Care to ensure "a high-quality service" without "forgetting the taxpayer", according to Panel Chair
The review aims to investigate the progress of other recommendations made by the Comptroller and Auditor General earlier this year, as well as those made by Professor Hugo Mascie-Taylor, whose damning report published last summer alleged a 'Jersey Way' in Health where patient safety was potentially being put at risk.
These recommendations resulted in the creation of a turnaround team and board of governance to provide leadership and oversight.
The turnaround team – also referred to as the 'Change Team' – is a group of five external experts brought in to the Health Department in an effort to repair relationships between senior management and clinicians. The team is expected to be in the island until December, at a potential cost of up to £800,000, which would equate to £160,000 per consultant for the year. Express also reported that HCS's management staffing budget had increased by more than £3million since 2019.
Chris Bown was originally due to lead that team, but he has since been appointed as the Interim Chief Officer of Health.
Now the PAC aims to examine whether these management positions will effectively contribute to good governance and accountability, quality of service and value for money.
Pictured: Deputy Lyndsay Feltham, the Chair of PAC, hopes the review will "provide assurance" to the taxpayer.
It will also assess the effectiveness of financial management within HCS given the department's 2022 overspend. At the end of last year, the government gave an extra £13.3m to HCS to deal with "unavoidable pressures" in 2022.
Deputy Lyndsay Feltham, Chair of the PAC, said she hoped the review would "provide assurance that the system we have in place for the governance in our health and social care system is not only robust enough to be able to implement positive and timely change, but also deliver a high-quality service to those it serves, not forgetting the taxpayer."
January's C&AG report highlighted that engagement between medical staff and operational management was "at best variable and at worst poor" with "a worsening of effective working relationships between consultants and staff in senior management positions in several key areas."
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