The must-read stories and debate in health policy and leadership.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s plans for integrated care systems to be awarded Care Quality Commission ratings have been shelved until summer 2024 at the earliest, HSJ understands.

Pressure from Mr Hunt when Commons health committee chair had led to expectations that his ambition would be fulfilled from next month. 

However, HSJ understands that although Department of Health and Social Care supports the CQC beginning early work on assessing ICSs shortly, it does not plan to sign off on the issuing of ratings, nor set any date for that to happen. 

The CQC last week published draft guidance on how it might assess ICSs, but this made clear it required signoff from the health and social care secretary to begin the work, which it has not yet had. 

It proposes that between April and July this year it will start looking at “access” in ICSs, and will pilot and develop its approach from there.

For their eyes only

Two external reviews into University Hospitals Sussex Foundation Trust’s general surgery services will not be made public. 

The trust has refused to make the reviews – into whether it is a “safe interpersonal working environment” –  available in this way, partly because of what it says are concerns they could lead to “harassment” of doctors who spoke to the authors.

Both reviews were into aspects of the general surgery services at the Royal Sussex County Hospitals in Brighton. The trust has had a series of highly critical CQC reports into some of its surgical services and a “well led” report is expected to be released in the next few weeks.

Both reviews have been completed and the trusts said their findings and recommendation were feeding into an improvement plan – but work on this has been delayed due to winter pressures. A report on the delivery of the improvement plan has yet to be presented to the trust board.

The trust has refused HSJ’s Freedom of Information Act request to release the reviews, arguing that those interviewed had been promised confidentiality, and the issues involved are “emotive and sensitive matters”.

“Disclosure could cause those involved in the reviews damage, distress and upset and could even lead to harassment,” it said.

Read our full story here.

Also on hsj.co.uk today

In West Country Chronicle, Nick Carding looks at how the region fared in the recent NHS Staff Survey on three key questions about the workplace: recommendation as a place to work, freedom to speak up, and how often staff are frustrated by their work. And in our new column The Mythbuster, Steve Black writes that one of the most persistent problems in the health service is that budgets for long-term improvement are regularly raided to cover short-term problems.