10.10.12
NHS Foundation Trust Governors
Source: John Rudkin
Until recently, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Trust has asserted a right to deal as it pleased with communications addressed to governors by patients. In my experience this practice has involved covert interception, censorship and anonymisation – conduct hardly in keeping with common courtesy or the requirements for openness and transparency of the Trust's Constitution and the Code of Governance for NHS Foundation Trusts.
After I had drawn the attention of the Lead Governor to this invidious state of affairs and the lack of a relevant policy, the latter has been introduced. Gratifyingly, the policy requires that those who communicate to governors “receive a professional and efficient reply”, and that “The Trust recognises that governors have the right to treat correspondence addressed to them as private”.
It is noteworthy, however, that the policy makes no mention of a right to privacy of those who communicate to governors. On the contrary, in the case of emails – which are not classed as written communications – the policy explicitly regularises the Trust’s opening and anonymisation of the correspondence and the production of written responses.
It will be interesting to learn the views of patients/the taxpaying public when they are made aware of this policy, bearing in mind that elected governors are responsible both for representing the public interest and for holding Directors to account for the performance of the Trust.
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