FT applications given higher risk rating

An NHS London report, released to HSJ under the Freedom of Information Act, shows the ratings given to Whittington Hospital Trust, Lewisham Healthcare Trust and South London Healthcare Trust deteriorated in May.

The Department of Health has warned trust boards they face dismissal if there are delays to the FT application date agreed in the tripartite formal agreement documents signed with the DH and their strategic health authorities in September 2011.

The NHS London document tracking trusts’ progress to FT status shows the date of the Whittington’s application to the DH has slipped by three months from its initial target of October 2012.

The document also confirmed Kingston Hospital Trust had missed its application date of March 2012 after failing an “independent quality governance review” carried out by management consultants.

The report said the delay was because the trust had not done well enough in the initial review to submit its FT application to the DH, but that after implementing the consultants’ suggestions this had now happened.

The third trust, South London Healthcare, has been officially “escalated” to the DH. The department will now oversee its progress though the foundation trust pipeline.

The documents obtained by HSJ also showed that five London trusts were among the 17 to have been “escalated” in this way.

The DH has not said which trusts are involved, but the documents reveal the London organisations are: Croydon Health Services, South West London and St George’s Mental Health, Imperial College Healthcare, South London Healthcare and Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals.

A letter in April from NHS deputy chief executive David Flory in his capacity as “senior responsible officer for the FT pipeline” to Mark Davies, chief executive of Imperial set out three “immediate requirements”  for the £900m-turnover central London acute trust.

The letter, also released under the Freedom of Information Act, said the trust must: “achieve financial balance on a month-by-month basis” and “recommence reporting on referral to treatment times at the latest by June”. The trust has been on a reporting “holiday” since January 2012.

The trust must also “achieve clarity on the strategic direction”