Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans his Department has to ensure pathology service standards are protected in the event of a successful private bidder experiencing financial or leadership difficulties.

As part of the pathology networking programme, NHS Improvement has issued a number of toolkits and guidance documents to support the clinical and commercial relationships that trusts enter into, whether they are between public sector organisations or with commercial organisations. This guidance has been drawn from lessons learnt by the sector from successful and unsuccessful networking programmes across England. It will be expected that all hospital trusts ensure adequate performance and review policies and commercial contract terms to provide assurance that the provider will take action in the event of any difficulty.

In addition to this, NHS Improvement will be reissuing the Pathology Quality Assurance Dashboard (PQAD) (as recommended following the 2012 Barnes review into the King's Mill quality failure). This dashboard, aimed toward trust executives and boards, seeks to demonstrate the clinical, operational and commercial performance. The National Pathology Optimisation and Delivery Group is the oversight board for the pathology networking programme and includes members of the pathology community, arm’s length bodies and commissioners. It will be developing a governance role to ensure the network formation and PQAD are fit for purpose to enable individual trusts to identify issues early and in advance of them impacting upon patient care.