London cluster identifies 'almost certain' risk to high quality primary care

The document produced for the cluster’s board meeting in late September said: “There is a risk that the identification of 45 live ‘issues of concern’ cases (10 of which are currently rated red) brought about by the establishment of a single primary care team and aggregation of South East London issues leading to potential risk to the ability to provide universally applicable high quality primary care to our populations.”

The document gave the problem a risk rating of 25, the highest possible, saying the probability was “almost certain” and the impact would be “catastrophic”.

The report said four non-executive directors had been appointed to “issues of concern” panels and that 42 cases had been closed.

It said the work had mitigated the impact from “catastrophic” to “major” but that staff capacity and the budget for dealing with cases was still an issue.

Chief executive of the south east London cluster Simon Robbins stepped down at the end of August and was replaced by Andrew Kenworthy