Clinical services

Challenging without offending

Our Clinical Services partners at Nina Murphy Associates help health and care organisations run more effectively by analysing their clinical performance. Working in sensitive areas, our philosophy is to challenge without offending, to be objective without losing empathy and to improve overall patient experience.

The challenge

Often, the challenge is identifying the problem in the first place. A concern is undefined, but the organisation has reached a threshold that is causing anxiety and risk. 

Or it may simply be that resolving a problem in a fixed time frame stretches the resource to breaking point.

Analysing the reasons for underperforming staff, or dealing with difficult subjects such as child deaths, requires sensitive handling.

Our approach

We have a team of 80 consultants, all with a strong healthcare background Chief Executive or Director level, whose experience helps organisations in three key areas:

1. Clinical performance. We assess individuals and teams to make sure they’re meeting the accepted standards. From a perspective of clinical expertise we’re able to examine how well they deliver primary care service.
2. Governance. Like our colleagues in the Governance team we help organisations understand where their procedures could be more effective. The difference is that our approach is a less process driven review and more of a bottom up approach
3. Statutory work. Where things go badly wrong and there’s a statutory basis for investigation, our consultants are experienced at handling the complex sensitivities in areas such as death in custody, domestic homicide or serious case review.

Frequently there’s a need for legal representation. Working so closely with a team of specialist lawyers in Capsticks, we’re able to give our clients legally sound advice and call in their expertise for cases that need go to tribunal or court.

For example

We’re asked to investigate a death in custody. We assess whether the care the victim was given matched the care they would have had in the community. We report our findings to the Prison and Probation Ombudsman. As some deaths involve a heavy degree of legal representation, we would suggest Capsticks lawyers take on the work and brief them thoroughly.

Which means…

Our clinical expertise means we identify problems and their root causes quickly, organisations can move to remedy the issue.

With the support of Capsticks legal team, you can be sure our advice is always based on a sound legal footing.

And our commitment to fairness and confidentiality gives employers and staff reassurance that any investigation or review is being conducted objectively.

Download page as PDF