A hospital trust is failing to recruit specialist doctors posing a ‘major’ risk to patient care, health chiefs have warned.
Calderdale and Huddersfield Foundation Trust (CHFT) says it has been unable to recruit specialist doctors leaving its hospitals ‘over-reliant’ on middle-grade doctors – and short of specialist input.
The trust, which runs Huddersfield Royal Infirmary (HRI), admitted it had been unable to fill posts in emergency medicine, anaesthetics, paediatrics, radiology, eye medicine, gynaecology and cancer treatment.
Bosses added that there was a ‘major’ risk of poor clinical decision-making in A&E due to the trust’s over-reliance on stand-in doctors.
And CHFT, which also runs Calderdale Royal Hospital (CRH), Halifax; said it had been unable to recruit physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech and language therapists and dieticians for its hospital and community teams.
The trust added that a lack of workforce planning and information was aggravating difficulties in filling medical staffing gaps.
All issues were identified as a ‘major’ risk by trust bosses in their latest board meeting report.
The report said there was a ‘risk of not being able to deliver safe and effective high quality care’ because of a ‘lack of nursing staffing’, ‘lack of medical staffing’, ‘over-reliance on middle grade doctors meaning less specialist input’ and a ‘lack of therapy staffing’.
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It added: “There is a risk of poor clinical decision making in A&E due to a dependence on locum middle-grade doctors at weekends and on nights resulting in possible harm to patients, extended length of stay and increased complaints.”
But CHFT Director of Nursing, Julie Dawes, said the trust was ‘mitigating’ the risk by using agency and bank staff.
Ms Dawes said: “This is not out of line with where other trusts are finding themselves and we are mitigating that with the use of bank and agency staff.”
Ms Dawes added that 12% of CHFT workforce were agency or bank staff.
She said: “We use agency staff during shortfalls; some of them are our own staff working extra hours.
“It’s only 12% of our workforce so the vast majority are permanent members of staff.”
CHFT, which is forecast to end the financial year with a £20m deficit, has already said it has been struggling to fill nursing positions and has been relying on expensive agency staff.
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Hospital chiefs say having services split between HRI and CRH is making it difficult to adequately staff wards on both sites.
Under Right Care Right Time Right Place services, including emergency care, will be centralised on one site.
But under the plan, HRI will lose its A&E while emergency services will be centralised at CRH.
