The 17th August deadline for UK trusts to respond to Freedom of Information requests on consultant 'opt-outs' has been breached by 33 trusts.
In response to the Secretary of State for Health's speech to the King's Fund in July, 154 Freedom of Information requests were made to all acute trusts across the UK. These requests were submitted by Dr Kiara Vincent in order to find out the true figures of active non-participation of weekend working under the consultant 'opt-out' clause, known as S3P6.
Trusts were due to respond by 17th August according to guidelines laid out by the Freedom of Information Act. 121 out of 154 trusts had replied by this date, leaving 33 trusts still to respond.
Provisional data analysis of the FOI requests revealed that only 0.25% of consultants were on record as having exercised their right to opt-out of non-emergency routine work at nights and weekends.
31 consultants at the Wrightington Hospital, an elective orthopaedic centre of excellence, were recorded as having waived working-hour protection by the European Working Time Directive, meaning that they had opted to work more at weekends than their contract allowed.
The DDRB report in July made links between the consultant opt-out clause and out-of-hours payments received by consultants for working extra paid shifts at nights and weekends. However, the DDRB failed to take into account the true figures of consultants opting-out, and mistakingly associated the opt-out clause with an increase in consultants doing paid locum shifts to fill in staffing vacancies.
The data made available by the FOI requests is being analysed by an independent team of researchers, with results awaited once all trusts have responded.
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