Lancashire surgeon awarded £23,000 after winning case against health watchdog for wrongful dismissal

Dr Shyam Kumar, 55, from Lancaster, who works as a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at University Hospitals Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, has spoken to the Post about his four year wait for justice after being dismissed from his part-time role as a special adviser on hospital inspections for the CQC.

Between 2015 and his dismissal in 2019, Mr Kumar wrote to senior colleagues at the CQC with a number of serious concerns including inadequate hospital inspections, staff bullying and serious patient harm.

They included a hospital inspection, at which he claims patient safety was significantly compromised when a group of 'whistleblowing' doctors were prevented from discussing their concerns.

He also said he had reported concerns about a surgeon at his own trust, Morecambe Bay, who had carried out operations that were "inappropriate" and of an "unacceptable" quality and harmed patients and had warned the CQC that the trust management wanted to bury it "under the carpet".

The Manchester Employment Tribunal judgement ruled his disengagement by the employer had been influenced by his ‘whistleblowing’ efforts and noted that his concerns were found to be justified and that the safety issues Dr Kumar raised played a significant role in his dismissal.

Dr Kumar who worked for the CQC from 2014-2019 said: "It has been an agony for four years. It is a good feeling to be vindicated.

"The whole energy of a few individuals in the CQC was spent on gunning me down, rather than focusing on improvement to patient safety and exerting the regulatory duties."

Asked what he made of the CQC saying they "accepted the findings", he added: "They really need to clean their stables and fix accountability.

"The CQC officials breached their own values that they apply to the organisations they regulate. They have not even offered an apology for causing detriment to me.

"The evidence in this case demonstrates that the CQC staff are not averse to idle gossip, inventing/exaggerating concerns when none exist, particularly when responding to serious disclosures.

"There are GMC registered doctors who were part of this process.

"The only way to prevent this from happening to others is for the CQC to take demonstrable actions against the individuals involved."

A spokesperson for the CQC said: “We accept the findings of the tribunal and recognise that the process of disengaging Mr Kumar from his role as a Specialist Advisor was handled poorly, without proper explanation. We have apologised to Mr Kumar for this. We are grateful for the concerns he raised, which were used in our ongoing regulation of the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay Trust. We inspected the trust, including orthopaedics, in November and December 2018, after he raised these concerns. We also inspected maternity services provided by this trust as part of a focused inspection in December 2019, as a direct result of separate information of concern, and have inspected the trust on a further two occasions since.

‘'The concerns staff and the public share with us about health and care services are critical to our work. This information helps us form a picture of how well a service is caring for people and whether we need to take action to ensure improvements are made. We are grateful to those staff that have contacted us to share concerns - it takes courage to speak out and it’s vital that people feel able to do so to prevent poor care and help support providers to make improvements. As at April 2022, of inspections triggered by new information, 47% were triggered by concerns shared by people who use and work in services and the public.

‘Specialist Advisors play a vital role in our inspections and we want to ensure when they contribute their expertise and time to help improve people’s care, they are properly supported to do so. Since 2019, we have strengthened our processes around the use of specialist advisors and, in line with the findings of the tribunal, will be further improving procedures for disengagement, including adding a right of appeal process.”