ICBs told to fix ‘substantial gaps’ in whistleblowing support

Integrated care boards have been told to rectify the “substantial gaps” in reporting through Freedom to Speak Up in primary care.

While numbers of “freedom to speak up” whistleblowing reports from staff in primary care are “improving”, they remain “relatively low”, NHS England said.

This is largely because “routes to escalate concerns are more limited than in secondary care, with risks to individual confidentiality due to the size of some providers,” Sir Andrew Morris, deputy chair of NHSE, said in a letter to ICBs this week.

He asked ICBs to ensure primary care workers are aware of and have access to “speaking up routes”, in order to support the primary care patient safety strategy published last week.

Primary care staff should be able to reach an FTSU guardian, the letter said. NHSE said there are “relatively very few trained and registered Freedom to Speak Up guardians that support primary care workers” and that even where guardians are in place, levels of speaking up “remain extremely low”.

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Source: HSJ, 3 October 2024