Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what research his Department has commissioned on the potential benefits of real-time reporting of nurse staffing numbers at NHS hospitals.
The Department is seeking to commission a strategic initiative of research to evaluate the Government’s response to the Francis report and help inform future policy. It is planned that the initiative will initially comprise six projects, including a project on safe staffing levels. The specification document for the call for research proposals is available on the Policy Research Programme Central Commissioning Facility website at the following address:
However, data in relation to safe staffing numbers is currently published on NHS Choices (www.nhs.uk).