Trust 'hiding serious harm and death' report

There was a fair bit of press coverage last week about an employment tribunal case against the Care Quality Commission – in which the regulator was found to have sacked an inspector for making a series of whistleblowing disclosures.

However, many of the key details were either skirted over, or missed altogether, in the coverage.

The disclosures made by Shyam Kumar related not just to his role as a special adviser for the CQC, but also to his full-time employer, University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay FT, and to understand the case fully, they need to be separated out.

The important context (also skirted over) was that Dr Kumar had raised a series of legitimate concerns about another orthopaedic surgeon at UHMB, both internally within the trust, and externally with the CQC, in 2018.

This caused major tensions within UHMB, to the extent that Dr Kumar started to be targeted for criticism by a different surgeon, being labelled a ‘traitor’ to Indian doctors in a group email.

When challenged by Dr Kumar, the colleague complained to the CQC that Dr Kumar had sought to threaten and intimidate him, along with other accusations.

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Source: HSJ, 12 September 2022