MSPs seek views on bill imposing health staffing duty

Proposals that would place a legislative duty on health boards and care service providers to ensure sufficient numbers of qualified staff on duty are to be examined by the Scottish Parliament’s Health & Sport Committee.

The aim of the Health and Care (Staffing) (Scotland) Bill is to ensure the provision of high-quality care and the health, wellbeing and safety of patients. It would place a general duty on health boards and care service providers to ensure that suitably qualified and competent individuals are working in sufficient numbers for the health, wellbeing and safety of services users, and for the provision of high quality care.

Health boards already have a duty to plan their workforce and to provide high quality care, and it has been mandatory for them to use the tools and methodology developed by the Nursing & Midwifery Workload and Workforce Planning Programme since 2013.

MSPs on the committee are scrutinising the bill at stage 1 and today issued a call for evidence. They would like to hear opinions on the legislation’s key strengths and weaknesses, as well as its policy objectives.

Committee convener Lewis Macdonald MSP said: “By far the biggest asset of the health service is its staff, who work tirelessly to look after the needs of patients. To provide high quality and safe care, we need to be assured that the right number of appropriately qualified staff are available to provide that care.

“Openness and transparency should be central to how the health service approach safe and effective staffing. The committee is keen to discover how responsive and accessible the NHS in Scotland will be, so that patients can have confidence in the care available.”

Click here to view the call for evidence. Responses are due by 1 August 2018.