The must-read stories and debate in health policy and leadership.

Today HSJ crunched the numbers from the latest General Medical Council national training survey to find the top and bottom trusts as they relate to junior doctors’ experience.

The 2021 data revealed Leeds Community Healthcare Trust was ranked bottom for “overall satisfaction” out of the trusts for which there were more than three respondents. The trust performed above average in the 2018 survey, but has fallen to below average over the last three years.

Leeds Community Healthcare medical director Ruth Burnett told HSJ the number of eligible survey responses was “very low” — only five trainees completed the survey — and questioned the validity of the data “when compared to trusts with large numbers of trainee responses”. 

United Lincolnshire and Northern Lincolnshire and Goole hospitals stand out for consistently low scores for several years since 2017.

Different departments within Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Foundation Trust appeared three times among the trusts with the lowest 10 “overall satisfaction” scores, with the gastroenterology department at the very bottom.

Specialists dominated the top five ranked trusts, apart from Northamptonshire Healthcare FT, which came fourth top overall.

All roads lead to questions

As well as the social care reform plans announced this week the government gave a sneak peak of some new plans for integration and prevention.

Sneak peak seems to be the best description since what was written will have left most people with a heap of unanswered questions but HSJ understands the government plans to attach plans for integration to its adult social care white paper later this year.

There was also a non-committal promise to look into turning the national NHS Health Check Scheme into a National Prevention Service, but no hint was given as to what this new NPS would be. The answer to this apparently lies within an unpublished review of the scheme, first announced in November. The review was due to publish this summer, which has now come and gone.

Any changes to the NHS Health Check Scheme may well have significant implications for primary care providers that deliver the service.

The third unanswered question was what No.1 meant by its promise to “Require NHSE/I to set out criteria for yearly reporting on spending on prevention, as well as outcomes, and trajectories.”

Reading carefully it is not clear if government will require NHSE to set new national outcomes and spending targets for prevention or simply publish guidance/criteria for it for local systems.